


I Will Fear No Evil (For You Are With Me)

by Fiver



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Alternative Perspective, F/M, M/M, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiver/pseuds/Fiver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not crazy!” Enjolras protests.</p>
<p>“I don’t know about that. I mean, sane people don’t take off in the dead of night to fight monsters. Which are real, by the way,” Courfeyrac puts in helpfully.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Enjolras's POV of events from my story <a href="http://www.archiveofourown.org/works/836606/chapters/1593488">Under My Wings You Will Find Refuge</a>, which I'd probably recommend reading first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during chapter 5 of Under My Wings, when Enjolras goes to meet up with his civilian buddies who have more or less all found out about his top-secret life as a hunter.
> 
> If there are any other scenes anyone would like to see from Enjolras's perspective, please feel free to let me know either here or on [tumblr](http://www.fivie.tumblr.com) because I had a lot of fun with this and I'd like to do more if anyone's interested!

 

 

~

 

Enjolras isn’t sure exactly how one is supposed to act around friends one hasn’t seen in three years. Judging by Courfeyrac and Marius’s reactions, he isn’t doing a stellar job so far.

Maybe that’s why he’s nervous. His throat is dry and his palms are decidedly not. He tries to wipe them discreetly on his jeans as he walks.

He’s never been overly good at taking time for leisure, not even when he was at school and especially not since he became a hunter. It feels strange to be out for reasons unrelated to a case, and to be almost totally unarmed.

(He may or may not still have a knife tucked into his boot. He feels entirely too vulnerable without at least one sharp object in his possession.)

It also feels strange to be walking alone. He isn’t sure if it’s good or bad how accustomed he’s become to having Grantaire as his constant shadow.

He reaches the bar where he agreed to meet Courfeyrac and the others. The windows are casting a warm glow out onto the street, and he can see his friends inside. His chest tightens at the sight. They hardly look any different from the last time he saw them all together, and for a strange, giddy moment the last three years seem like nothing but a bizarre dream he had. He’s back in time, he’s just a Politics major again, the last one to the bar as usual because he yet again stayed in the library until the janitor kicked him out-

He shakes his head. The sense of familiarity might be overwhelming, but all that was a long time ago now.

The nervousness is clawing at him again, but he doesn’t allow himself to hesitate. From what he can see, Joly and Bossuet look calm enough. If they can keep their cool about this, then he certainly can.

But dear God, it was exhausting enough telling Courfeyrac the truth and then convincing him that it was, in fact, the truth and that he hadn’t just lost his mind and started killing people because he thought they were monsters. Enjolras isn’t looking forward to repeating the process.

He steps inside. Cosette spots him first; she smiles and waves him over. Joly and Bossuet turn around, and it takes about point five of a second for Enjolras to realise that Courfeyrac is a liar and a scoundrel and did not tell them that he is alive and well and that he was coming to meet them tonight. Their mouths fall open in perfect tandem, because Joly and Bossuet do everything in perfect tandem and it’s kind of weird, and then they’re nearly tripping over each other as they leap out of their seats and practically fall on him.

He is going to _kill_ Courfeyrac, Enjolras decides, and then he realises that it’s been three years since he’s thought that, and then suddenly he and Joly and Bossuet are in a wild tangle of limbs as they all try to hug each other at the same time because _oh God he is so happy to see them_ and apparently the feeling is mutual and the whole bar is staring at them, and he just starts laughing. All the fear and high-stakes tension of the last few days melts away and he laughs and laughs and clings to his friends who are clinging to him in turn.

He’s home. He shouldn’t be, but he is, and apparently it’s alright.

“How are you two so calm?” Joly suddenly demands of Marius and Courfeyrac. “I mean...look! _Look!_ ”

He releases Enjolras just long enough to gesture to him furiously, as if the other two might just have simply failed to see him there.

“Evening, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac says with a wide grin, settling back in his seat and taking a sip from the pint-glass in front of him.

“Don’t think I won’t hit you,” Enjolras replies. Bossuet has, by now, let go of him and only has a hand resting on his shoulder, but Joly’s arms are wrapped in a death-grip around his torso again, and it’s making it slightly hard to breathe.

“You knew!” Bossuet says in disbelief. Joly’s mouth falls open again.

“You-!” He stares, agog, while Courfeyrac throws his head back and cackles. “You _terrible person!_ ”

“What, what? Don’t you guys like surprises?” Courfeyrac says.

“Sorry, Enjolras,” Marius says, clearly trying not to laugh too. “I thought he told them.”

“You knew too?” Joly’s head whips between Courfeyrac and Marius, as if trying to puzzle out their secret conspiracy. “I don’t understand. What’s going on? Enjolras?”

“It’s good to see you,” Enjolras says, addressing Joly and Bossuet collectively because, well, they always were practically joined at the hip. “And we’ll explain everything. But it’s a long and insane-sounding story, so we should probably sit down.”

“As you can see, he’s as charmingly pragmatic as ever,” Courfeyrac says.

Joly seems reluctant to detach himself from Enjolras but eventually does so and returns to his seat, at which point Bossuet, without preamble, cuffs Enjolras over the head.

“I missed you and I’m sure you have an excellent excuse for leaving, but I doubt you have much excuse at all for not telling anyone where you were going,” he says in response to Enjolras’s wounded, questioning look. He gestures to Joly. “You made him sick.”

“Sick?” Enjolras repeats, confused. Ever since they met in high school, Joly has always seemed to be ailing with something, whether real or imagined, but Enjolras fails to see how he could have contributed to the trend.

“I’m always sick, as you know,” Joly says breezily. “No big deal.”

“You missed three weeks of school,” Bossuet says. “Quite a big deal.”

“What?” Enjolras is lost.

“Mmm.” Courfeyrac drains his glass. This new topic seems to have sobered him. “I always thought that ‘worrying yourself sick’ was just a turn of phrase. Turns out I was wrong.”

“Leave it,” Joly says, and it sounds like a plea. He looks horribly embarrassed. “He’s just back and you want to start bringing that up?” He grabs Enjolras’s sleeve and pulls him down and into the seat next to him. “I’m more interested in how he’s back and where the hell he’s _been._ And also the fact that he is evidently alive. That’s, y’know. Nice.”

Enjolras smiles weakly.

“You can start, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac says, getting to his feet. “I’ll go get the next round of drinks, and I’ll make them strong ones.”

“That bad?” Bossuet asks, resuming his seat and raising an eyebrow.

“Let me put it this way,” Courfeyrac says before Enjolras can stop him. “Van Helsing and John Constantine and Buffy Summers combined would have nothing on this guy.”

He claps Enjolras once on the shoulder before sauntering over to the bar.

“...What?” Joly says finally.

Enjolras takes a deep breath.

~

Within twenty minutes, Joly is begging him to consider psychological evaluation.

“I’m not crazy!” Enjolras protests.

“I don’t know about that. I mean, sane people don’t take off in the dead of night to fight monsters. Which are real, by the way,” Courfeyrac puts in helpfully.

“Don’t encourage this!” Joly says shrilly. “Enjolras, listen, you always put a lot of pressure on yourself, no one is going to judge you if it’s finally taken its toll, you know?”

“Yeah, no one’s saying _crazy_ , just. Temporarily unbalanced, maybe?” Bossuet looks genuinely concerned and also fully prepared to throw himself in front of Joly should Enjolras suddenly decide that he is actually a vampire or a werewolf and therefore has to die.

“Not crazy,” Enjolras mutters. He’s horribly aware that he has no real way to prove the fact.

“Are you suggesting that crazy is contagious now, Joly?” Courfeyrac says. “Cosette can back Enjolras up on this. So can Marius! Hell, so can I! There was a dead ghoul in my apartment!”

“...It was a wraith,” Enjolras says while Joly’s face goes white.

Cosette leans across the table and lays her hand over one of Joly’s.

“I know your friends sound like delusional serial killers right now,” she says kindly. “But I’m afraid it’s even worse than that. The unpleasant truth is that Enjolras is perfectly sane and everything he’s said is true.”

“I still think the ‘sane’ thing is up for debate,” Courfeyrac says. “But yeah.”

“Monsters are things dreamt up by people as thinly-veiled metaphors for the things we’re most afraid of,” Joly is saying dazedly. “They aren’t. Real.”

“Yes, they are,” Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Cosette and Marius say in unison.

~

Another half hour later, and Bossuet appears to have resigned himself to the fact that his friends have apparently all gone insane, whereas Joly, whilst still equally unbelieving, has, for the sake of his nerves, imbibed four successive shots of something strong and lurid green and now seems a lot more relaxed about the whole thing, though he also seems to have decided that it’s a joke they’re all playing on him. He just laughs every time anyone tries to convince him otherwise.

“See, this is why I took off in the middle of the night without a word,” Enjolras says wearily.

“I might find it in my heart to forgive you,” Courfeyrac replies. “It must _suck,_ doing a job that no one even believes in.”

“It’s not always easy,” Enjolras says.

“Do you ever have to, like, lie your way into places?”

“All the time.” Enjolras drains his own glass, because Joly is still giggling behind his hand and he is just too sober to deal with that. “It’s usually a person or several people dying under strange circumstances that alerts us to a case, so quite often we’re trying to get into murder scenes to look for clues as to what we’re dealing with. There’s a lot of lying involved. Or straight-up breaking and entering if lying isn’t a viable option.”

“Oh, my God.” Bossuet puts his head in his hands.

“Wait, wait. So do you...? Do you pretend to be, I dunno, a cop or a...?”

“Or a reporter. Sometimes an Interpol agent. I wouldn’t try that one here, though. Way too close to their headquarters.” Bossuet looks despairing, Joly has stopped laughing and the look of utter fascination on Courfeyrac’s face is frankly alarming, but Enjolras finds it feels _really good_ to just say this stuff out loud for once. “It all depends on the case.”

“Do you have fake ID’s?” Courfeyrac asks in a ridiculous hushed whisper, eyes positively gleaming.

Enjolras wordlessly hands him his wallet; Courfeyrac immediately starts raking through all the false press cards and foreign driver’s licenses and credit cards with names other than Enjolras’s own on them. The police badges are in his luggage back at the hotel, but Courfeyrac looks more than impressed with the contents of the wallet.

“Your life is _awesome_ ,” he declares with undisguised glee.

“Hmm.” Not even Enjolras would go quite that far, but he’s too busy tapping at his phone to argue. “Joly?”

“Yes?” Joly looks nervous, which isn’t that unusual in itself, but Enjolras can’t remember ever being the root cause of his anxiety before and he’s starting to wish he’d never agreed to come here.

“You must practically be a doctor by now,” Enjolras says, finding the photos from the morgue and holding the phone out to Joly. “What do you know that could do this?”

Joly takes the phone and peers at the screen. He lets out a low moan when he sees the rather distinct image of what is clearly a corpse.

“Tell me you didn’t,” he says, voice muffled by the hand he’s clapped over his own mouth.

“What? No! No. Courfeyrac, this was a horrible idea,” Enjolras says.

“What was?” Courfeyrac is still engrossed in his wallet. “Why the hell do you have a card that says you’re a health inspector?”

“Haunted restaurant kitchen, long story.” Enjolras gives up on him and turns back to Joly. “Look, I swear I did not kill any of the dead people on my phone.” Joly gives a small squeak as if to say _there’s more?!_ “I want you to look at the photo and see what you think could have killed them.”

Joly manages a shaky nod and complies. Enjolras can tell the moment he spots the wound at the base of the skull – he frowns, his eyes narrow slightly, and he goes into healthcare-professional-mode which can only be a good thing.

“The only obvious injury is this puncture wound right here,” he says, pointing. “It could have been fatal, but it would probably have had to penetrate the skull, which...”

“Which is unusual, right?” Enjolras says. “What kind of weapon could do that?”

“It’s hard to say exactly,” Joly says uncertainly. “The hole is so small and neat, and it’s almost perfectly in the centre of the back of the head, which would suggest it wasn’t inflicted by brute force. I suppose...” He goes slightly green. “Maybe some kind of drill?”

“Or maybe this?” Enjolras reaches over and flicks through a few photos. When they were in the process of disposing of the wraith’s body, he’d had the foresight to take a picture of its arm with the spike extended, for this exact reason.

“What is _that?_ ” Joly asks, dropping the phone onto the table in horror.

“Did you just show him a wraith’s severed arm?” Cosette mutters. She’s been sitting staring into her French martini for a while now. Marius had said something about getting more drinks – Enjolras only now realises that he’s been gone for at least ten minutes.

“I was running out of options,” Enjolras says defensively.

“This stopped being funny,” Joly says miserably. Bossuet puts an arm around his shoulders before glancing at the phone screen himself and looking just as disturbed.

“Look, you can either believe what I’m telling you, or you can believe that I’m a murderer,” Enjolras says abruptly. “I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

Joly and Bossuet stare at him, mouths slightly agape. Cosette sighs.

“Éponine and I can give them a more thorough and convincing induction later,” she says. “For now, why don’t we forget the question of where Enjolras has been and just be happy about the fact that he’s here now?”

“That sounds like such a good plan,” Joly says just as Marius arrives back with a tray of drinks.

“Hey,” he says with an uncertain smile. “Are we all good here now?”

“You coward,” Enjolras says, taking the glass offered to him without even thinking to ask what’s in it.

He takes his phone back to stow it in his pocket. The photos had once again brought to his mind the question of exactly how Grantaire had procured them, which had, of course, reminded him that Grantaire isn’t here with him tonight, and that’s weird, but it _shouldn’t_ be weird because he’s known Grantaire only a few months and he was never a part of this group and it shouldn’t feel like there’s an empty space at this table without him.

It might have something to do with the way that Joly and Bossuet are watching him, still with relief over his wellbeing but also now with wariness, and the way that Courfeyrac, Marius and Cosette are in turn watching them with thinly-veiled concern. Enjolras loves his friends, and he knows they care about him – though perhaps he’s only now realising exactly how much – but it’s undeniable that he isn’t really _one of them_ anymore.

As a hunter, he’s gotten used to being an outsider. But since Grantaire started following him around, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be the _lone_ outsider.

~

It takes a little while for the tension to defuse, but eventually, thanks to Courfeyrac’s insistence upon a game of Never Have I Ever (which Enjolras opted out of and no one argued because apparently the aim of the game is to find out who among them has had the most messed-up sexual encounters and everyone knows it won’t be Enjolras), everybody is drunk enough to stop worrying about whether or not monsters exist or, indeed, whether or not Enjolras should be institutionalised.

Being surrounded by drunk people, and also being the closest to drunk himself than he’s been in a _long_ time, is another thing that makes Enjolras think of Grantaire, who goes out drinking so often, and isn’t it weird that he chose to stay in on the _one_ night Enjolras was going out? Enjolras would have thought that he’d have enjoyed the opportunity to laugh and fall about dramatically and say _‘You? Drinking alcohol? Like a normal person? Is the world about to fall off its axis?’_

Enjolras wonders if he should call him to let him know.

It takes a few moments for his mind to register just how ridiculous that idea is, and he realises he must be rather more drunk than he initially thought.

Though he’s at least less drunk than Courfeyrac, who is currently trying to get Marius to dance with him while Cosette laughs and Bossuet supervises.

“Hey.” Enjolras nudges Joly who, despite everything, is still sitting next to him. “What did they mean when they said you got sick? After I left?”

“Oh.” Joly’s already flushed cheeks darken. “It was...mm. You know how I get. Even the smallest things stress me out to a stupid extent.”

“And?”

“And you disappearing like that was a pretty _big_ thing.”

Enjolras, who has never been particularly afflicted by stress, turns this over a few times in his mind.

He suddenly remembers, with horrible clarity, being fifteen and missing a full period of History because he was in the school bathrooms doing his inept best to look after Joly, who had his head halfway down a toilet bowl and was throwing up and shaking like someone with a bad dose of food poisoning. It had been a singularly unpleasant and stressful incident for both of them, with Joly refusing to go to the nurse’s office and Enjolras not understanding why and Joly eventually catching his breath long enough to hiss at him _because I’m not sick, I’m just **stupid**_ and Enjolras not understanding that either. He’d offered to go and get Bossuet – because even back then he’d known that Bossuet was the best person at calming Joly down, and he was also just an infinitely more comforting person than Enjolras had ever been – but Joly had actually seized a handful of his trouser-leg to stop him.

_No!_

_Why not?_

_He’s in class!_

_So? I’ll say one of his teachers needs to talk to him._

_You’ll get him into trouble._

_He won’t care about that._

_Leave it, Enjolras! I don’t want to bother him. Or you. You can go, too. Go to class._

_Don’t be stupid._

And that had triggered another bout of dry-retching and Enjolras wasn’t sure if Joly was crying or if his eyes were just watering as a side-effect of all the vomiting but either way he clearly wasn’t happy. And so they had both spent the rest of the period sitting on the floor of the stall, while Joly quietly lamented that said floor probably hadn’t been cleaned recently, and miserably and repetitively wiped the seat of the toilet he was throwing up into with anti-bac wipes. When Enjolras kept asking what was wrong, Joly eventually mumbled something about a C in a Chemistry test and how his parents were going to murder him but Enjolras couldn’t see how that was in any way connected to him being violently ill and in the end he just stopped asking because he was clearly missing something. Instead he just awkwardly slung an arm around Joly’s shivery shoulders, which he seemed to appreciate a lot more, though he wouldn’t stop apologising.

_I’m so sorry, Enjolras. This is- ugh. I’m sorry. You should go._

_I’m not going._

_I’m sorry._

_You don’t need to be sorry._

Finally the bell rang, and Bossuet apparently utilised his mysterious Joly-is-in-peril telepathic powers because he showed up and told Enjolras that he was being relieved of duty, and Joly looked so glad to see him but also utterly mortified, and Enjolras had left them to it and never really made head or tail of the whole thing. He’d got a detention for missing class but, well, he’d already had a considerable number of detentions lined up so he’d hardly noticed that. And then the next time he’d seen Joly, he’d been his usual, very cheerful self, and they’d never talked about it again, because Joly clearly didn’t want to.

And it wasn’t like Enjolras thought that was the _only_ time something like that had happened – he _noticed_ that Joly looked pale and didn’t eat much around exam time, and that he missed a great deal of school during the Great Stomach Bug Epidemic of their final year despite not having contracted said stomach bug, and that he spent the week before he received his acceptance letter for university largely holed up in his bedroom and communicating only by text or Skype because he was, quote, ‘indisposed’. He noticed. He just never questioned or understood those things. That, to him, was just Joly.

He has a sinking feeling in his chest now, which suggests that he’s _starting_ to understand.

“You got sick because you were worried about me,” he says. This doesn’t make a great deal of sense to him – because when he’s worried about something he just goes and does something about it, and in his case that usually involves just killing something and being done with it – but he is not Joly and Joly is not him and this seems to be the only logical conclusion.

“Did you think we wouldn’t worry?” Joly asks him, exasperated. “Really, I want to know what your thought process was when you were leaving. Exactly what made you think that was a good idea?”

“I didn’t want to lie to you and I also didn’t want you to know the truth in case it put you in danger,” Enjolras says. “So I thought I’d just disappear.”

“And you _really_ thought we wouldn’t be worried?”

“I knew you’d all _worry,_ but I thought it would...you know. Pass?”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Joly declares, punching his arm. “But we always knew that. Enjolras, the idiot-genius.”

“And I never thought it’d make you ill. I would never have-”

“Enjolras.” Joly cuts him off. “I’m just happy you’re back, okay? I was never going to bring the getting sick thing up. It’s...just forget it. Sorry.”

“ _You’re_ sorry?”

“The others were just as worried about you,” Joly says shortly, stirring his drink with his straw and not looking Enjolras in the eye. “But they managed. You shouldn’t have to feel even worse about being your stupid self just because I was, y’know, abnormal as usual.”

“What does being normal have to do with it?” Enjolras asks, confused. “I’m the one who fucked up, not you.”

Joly laughs.

“You always did say the sweetest things,” he says. He sucks on his straw until it rattles hollowly against the bottom of the glass. “But it’s fine, really. I’m fine now.”

“Good. Great,” Enjolras says awkwardly. “Sorry, this is a terrible reunion.”

“Like you said, you fucked up,” Joly says with a grin, and bizarrely that lets Enjolras know that all is forgiven, and he relaxes a little.

“Give me some good news,” he says. “There must be some good things I’ve missed these last few years. Are you and Bossuet still living together?”

“Yes!” Joly says happily before looking slightly bashful. “And, um. There’s a girl.”

“A girl?” Enjolras repeats in surprise. “For you or Bossuet?”

“Um. Both?”

“You...both have girlfriends?” Enjolras says slowly, wondering why Joly is fidgeting and blushing.

“No. It’s...” Joly trails off and waves his arms distractedly. “There’s me, and there’s Bossuet, and there’s a girl.”

Enjolras blinks. Joly just waits, his fingers tapping out an erratic beat on the table top, giving Enjolras’s brain a few moments to reach the obvious conclusion.

“Oh! Oh.” The penny drops. “So, the three of you...?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Enjolras blinks a few times more. “What’s her name?”

The question seems to surprise Joly – as if it wasn’t the one he was expecting – but his face quickly breaks into a bright smile.

“Her name’s Musichetta. And she’s lovely, Enjolras. Like, really lovely. I mean she’s a lovely person. But pretty, too. I think she’s just about the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” He sighs happily. “She’s working tonight. I wish you could meet her.”

“You want to introduce her to the friend who disappeared for three years and came back crazy?” Enjolras asks with a faint snort, and he really was aiming for light-hearted with that but it might have come out just a little bit bitter. Joly smiles warmly at him and pats his hand.

“I know you’re not crazy,” he says. “And I know you’d never kill anyone. I’m just not sure if I’m ready to believe in monsters either, you know?”

“I know. It’s hard to believe. I understand.”

“It looks like there’s some serious bonding going on over here,” Courfeyrac says, finally releasing Marius and flopping back into his seat. “What’re you two whispering about?”

“I was telling Enjolras about Musichetta,” Joly says as everyone else also settles back around the table.

“Oh yeah? Can you believe there’s a girl who’s willing to deal with both these guys at the same time?” Courfeyrac sniggers before nodding seriously. “I have a lot of respect for Musichetta. She is powerful.”

Enjolras notices Bossuet watching him with the same sort of nervousness as Joly was previously, and he supposes it’s because a lot of people probably consider their relationship unconventional, at the very least, but Enjolras has made a living out of travelling around Europe and killing monsters and occasionally posing as an officer of the law, so he doesn’t think he really has the right to consider anyone else’s life strange.

“What about you, Courfeyrac?” he asks. “Has anyone managed to pin you down yet?”

“Plenty of people have pinned me down,” Courfeyrac says with the sort of grin that instantly has Enjolras regretting his choice of words. “And believe me when I say I’ve done my fair share of pinning-down too. But there’s no one special, if that’s what you mean.”

“The same as always, then,” Enjolras says, smiling despite himself.

“And you?” Courfeyrac’s smile turns sly. “Are you the same as always?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, what’s the deal with that guy you were with? If he’s not your witness protection assigned bodyguard, who is he?”

“You mean Grantaire?” Enjolras says, blinking, having lost the thread of this conversation already.

“Who’s Grantaire?” Joly asks, poking Enjolras in the ribs. “You made a friend?”

“ _Please_ tell me he’s more than a friend,” Courfeyrac says. He clasps his hands together in a mock-plea. “After three years on the road, you must have a dirty, scandalous romance to share, and I want to hear it.”

“A dirty...what? Me and-? No.” Enjolras finally catches up with Courfeyrac’s train of thought, and he really _shouldn’t_ be surprised but, well, he is out of practice. “No, it’s not like that at all.”

“Who is this guy?” Joly whines. “I want to know.”

“He’s...” Enjolras hesitates – because how exactly _is_ he meant to explain Grantaire? – and his hesitation only makes Courfeyrac grin wider. “He’s a colleague?”

“This guy kills monsters too,” Bossuet says, shaking his head. “That’s a good start.”

“Yeah, he...yeah.” Enjolras shrugs. “We work together.”

“And travel together, right?” Courfeyrac chimes in. “You two have been travelling around Europe together, _alone_ , for like three years, sharing hotel rooms and sleeper cars, and you want me to believe that nothing ever _happened?_ ”

“I believe it,” Joly says.

“We’ve only been working together a few months, not since the start,” Enjolras corrects. He’s doing his best to remain unflappable, but this has always been his least favourite topic of conversation, and he can feel the discomfort eating at him already. “And of course nothing’s happened, why would travelling together mean anything would _happen_...”

“Wait, a few months? No way.” Courfeyrac looks genuinely surprised – for a moment he even loses his mischievous smile of pure evil.

“Yes? What?”

“Nothing, just...” And there it is, the evil smile is back. “You two seemed quite cosy? I’ve never seen you take to someone that fast.”

Enjolras opens his mouth to protest but then he remembers the night they bumped into Courfeyrac at The ABC, and Grantaire _had_ been acting weirdly familiar that night, and Enjolras is sure it was all part of the act that went along with his stupid witness protection story but convincing Courfeyrac of that probably isn’t worth the effort.

“This isn’t fair, I want to see Enjolras being cosy with someone,” Joly says sadly. “Why didn’t he come with you tonight, Enjolras?”

“We’re not _cosy,_ and I don’t know why he didn’t come, he just...didn’t,” Enjolras grinds out, and he feels like he only just managed to stop pondering that particular question and now his so-called friends have gone and brought it up again.

“He was too afraid. He’s not ready to face your friends and our inevitable stern questioning.” Courfeyrac reaches over to clumsily run his fingers over Enjolras’s cheek. “You are our delicate flower and we have to be sure his intentions are honourable. No wait, dishonourable. We definitely want his intentions to be dishonourable.”

“He doesn’t have _intentions_ ,” Enjolras says, pushing his hand away. “Why aren’t you listening? It’s not like that.”

“But why not?” Courfeyrac asks, pouting.

“Because...” Enjolras starts and then realises he doesn’t really have an answer.

“How did you meet?” Joly asks, propping his chin on his hands and looking far too excited.

“Um. I don’t know. He was just sort of...there one day.” Enjolras frowns and casts his mind back. He remembers they met at the Musain; that he’d been talking with Combeferre and then a complete stranger had just waltzed over, all wine-fumes and bravado, mocking laughter and infuriating insolence, and his only thought had been to walk away and never think of the presumptuous idiot ever again. And yet. Well. Things hadn’t exactly worked out that way.

His frown deepens. It seems strange, now that he thinks back. Because Grantaire isn’t really insolent, or full of any sort of bravado, and he does laugh at Enjolras all the time but even he knows that he’s teasing, not mocking. So why did he give such a bad account of himself that first night-?

_Because you’d have walked away otherwise,_ a cool logical voice in his head pipes up. He fights the urge to squirm. He’s not sure if he likes that conclusion.

“He swept you off your feet?” Courfeyrac says dreamily.

“ _No_ ,” Enjolras says shortly. “I told you, we work together, and that’s all.”

“Don’t you guys get _lonely?_ ”

“No.” And maybe Grantaire does, maybe when he disappears for the night he’s not just out drinking, maybe it’s his goal to fuck at least one person in every country they visit, but that’s really none of Enjolras’s business and it’s definitely not his concern so long as Grantaire doesn’t do something supremely stupid like go home with a succubus.

“Is he just not your type?”

“Do I _have_ a type?”

“So what you’re saying is, if he walked in right now...” Courfeyrac leans over until their faces are inches apart; Enjolras stares back evenly, “and looked deep into your eyes and just,” he makes an obscene smacking noise with his lips, “laid one right on you, that wouldn’t do anything for you?”

Enjolras thinks his brain might have short-circuited. He just stares. Because. What?

There’s a drawn-out moment of utter silence, and then Courfeyrac crows with laughter.

“Oh my God, Enjolras, you’ve gone red!” he exclaims, clapping his hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever made you blush before! This is an achievement. This is a great- _oww!_ ”

“Stop it, Courfeyrac,” Cosette says, pleasantly but firmly, and Enjolras realises that Courfeyrac’s pained howl was due to her kicking him under the table. “You’re being mean.”

“No I’m not, I’m just- _oh God, ow._ ”

Enjolras knows first-hand just how painful a kick from Cosette can be and while he can’t quite find it in his heart to be sympathetic at this exact moment, he at least hopes Courfeyrac has the sense to stop talking soon.

“If you’re ever back in town, Enjolras, make sure Grantaire knows he’s welcome to come out with us, too,” Cosette goes on.

“Wait, you’re leaving again?” Joly says in alarm. His smile dissolves and is replaced by an expression closely resembling that of a kicked puppy that has just realised he’s about to be kicked again.

“I have to,” Enjolras says and Bossuet exclaims ‘ _what?’_ and Joly makes a small wounded noise and oh God he feels like such a bad person. “I’ll be assigned a new case, and it could be anywhere.”

“Assigned? You have a boss?” Courfeyrac asks, looking fascinated once again while Bossuet and Joly just look sort of distraught.

“He’s not my boss,” Enjolras says, frowning. “He’s...a friend.”

“He should come drinking with us too!” Courfeyrac declares.

“That’s good,” Marius says suddenly. He’s been very quiet all evening, probably due to a combination of not wanting to intrude upon the Enjolras-Joly-Bossuet reunion and being just plain terrified of all the mixed emotions flying around. “That you have friends, I mean. That you’re not alone in...this.”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says, though he’s still not sure if he should consider Grantaire a friend, or if Grantaire would even want to be considered as such, and wow, he is not good at this, and a few minutes later Courfeyrac sets yet another drink down in front of him and that doesn’t help his thought process one little bit.

The rest of the evening is...nice. They don’t talk about monsters anymore, or where Enjolras has been and why he thought he could just leave and scare years off everyone’s lives. They just talk about normal things, like how much studying they’re all having to do this year, and the insane hours that Joly is having to put in at the hospital in addition to his classes, and the story of how Marius and Cosette met. Marius’s face is scarlet for the entire tale, and romance is something that Enjolras has never had a great deal of time for, but even he has to admit that they’re cute.

Then there are more drinking games which Courfeyrac initiates and Enjolras doesn’t take part in because he will not allow himself to be too hungover in the morning because that would just give Grantaire entirely too much satisfaction- and yeah, great, he’s thinking about Grantaire again.

In truth, Grantaire remains at the edge of his mind the whole night, even while Enjolras is smiling with his friends and watching Courfeyrac make an idiot of himself, and even when the bar eventually closes and they all insist on walking him right to the door of his hotel just to have a few minutes more with him before he, according to Joly, ‘callously abandons them’ once again. He’s paying attention to his friends, of course, but his brain is built for multi-tasking and there’s a small niggling part of it that just won’t stop wondering _but why didn’t he want to come out tonight, that’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, going out and getting drunk is his thing, and he’s always ragging at you to come along – “loosen up, live a little, enjoy yourself!” – but tonight he’s not here and he didn’t say why and it’s just weird._

There’s a lot of hugging outside the hotel doors, and it’s not like Enjolras particularly minds – hell, he’s almost-drunk enough to go on hugging all night – but it does seem to go on for quite a long time before Bossuet peels Joly and Courfeyrac off of him, gives him on last pat on the shoulder and tells him that they’ll see him at the train station before he goes. And then they’re leaving, and Enjolras stands and watches them walk away with a strange, dazed and disconnected feeling. For a while, again, it had felt just like old times, and he has to forcibly remind himself that that isn’t the case, and maybe he’ll see his friends for one last goodbye before he leaves but after that he won’t see them again for a long time.

He goes into the hotel and starts climbing the stairs and that’s when his brain decides it would be a great idea to suggest to him _hey maybe Grantaire didn’t come because he’s angry with you._

Enjolras is quick to dismiss that idea, though. To his knowledge, Grantaire has only been properly angry with him one time, and that was...memorable.

Smolensk should have been the easiest case they’d ever worked together. Like here, it was a rare opportunity to get rid of the danger before anyone got killed, and Enjolras had been so ready to just salt and burn and move on, but-

Well. Grantaire had taken exception to that, it seemed. Enjolras was of the opinion that just because those spirits hadn’t harmed anyone _yet_ didn’t mean that they didn’t intend to in the future, but apparently the two of them were just going to have to agree to disagree on that point.

He can’t forget the jolt that went through him when he woke up to an empty hotel room. Which was stupid, really, because he quite often wakes up in empty hotel rooms, but the general rule seems to be that if Grantaire is there when he falls asleep, Grantaire will be there the whole night. The breaking of that unspoken rule startled him. And that, coupled with the slightly vicious argument they’d had earlier, had made his throat go tight and his insides feel cold.

If he’d thought to turn on the light, he would have seen Grantaire’s bag still lying by his bed, and maybe one of his sketchbooks on the nearby table. He didn’t, though. He sat up in the dark and thought _wow, I’m on my own again._

He’d been surprised that that had been so distressing to him. He’d been hunting on his own ever since Feuilly died; it had never been an issue. After only a few months travelling with Grantaire, it should have been easy for him to slip back into his solitary routine. The thought of it shouldn’t have _bothered_ him.

Maybe it was just the suddenness of the departure. Who knew?

It was a moot point anyway, because when he woke up again in the morning Grantaire was there – still angry, still stubbornly avoiding his eyes and not saying a word, but _there –_ and if Enjolras felt the strangest rush of relief then, well, no one had to know.

It’s not an incident he’s eager to ever repeat, however.

He reaches their room, manages to find his key despite the fact that his hands and brain don’t seem to be communicating as well as usual, and lets himself in as quietly as possible. He winces when the door creaks loudly despite his best efforts.

“Don’t worry about tip-toeing,” Grantaire’s voice says from the shadows. “I’m awake.”

“Oh.” Enjolras isn’t sure _why_ he’s awake at this time, but he decides he shouldn’t question it because he’s awake too. He makes it over to his bed, manages to get his shoes off and then briefly considers changing before deciding he’s too tired and it isn’t worth it and just collapsing onto the mattress as he is. He gets the sense that Grantaire’s eyes are following him despite the darkness.

“You’ve had a good day,” Grantaire says once he’s settled. “Patched things up with Combeferre, reconciled with your civilian friends. You’re on fire.”

“Mmm.” Enjolras says. After a moment he decides that something a bit more coherent is in order. “You should’ve come tonight. There were drinking games. You would’ve won.”

“I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not,” Grantaire says, sounding amused. “Did you win?”

“I didn’t play,” Enjolras tells him.

He’s quiet for a while after that, and Grantaire doesn’t press him for any more details. He feels like he wants to say something, but he’s not sure what, exactly. _‘Listen, just so you know, I’m kind of glad you didn’t take off in the middle of the night that one time’?_

Maybe not.

It’s true that he patched things up with Combeferre, though, and with his other friends, but did he and Grantaire ever really patch things up after that fight? Enjolras doesn’t think they did. Things just went back to normal after a while. They never talked about it. And at the time he was glad, because he didn’t want to talk about it. But. Hm.

“I thought you left, you know. I didn’t think you’d come back,” he finds himself saying, which isn’t fair at all because he did not approve these words before they left his mouth.

“What?” Grantaire sounds puzzled. “When?”

“In Russia, that time.” Enjolras makes a hand gesture that he’s pretty sure communicates his wish that Grantaire would catch up already. How can he not know what he means? How dare he not know.“You were angry at me.”

“Russia...? Oh, right. The ghost kids.” Grantaire still sounds a little lost. “What made you think of that?”

“Talking about patching things up.”

“Right.”

“I woke up and you were gone,” Enjolras says, and he hopes that didn’t sound too whiny or accusing but he’s very concerned that it might have.

“I just went for a walk. I couldn’t sleep,” Grantaire tells him. If Grantaire was anyone else, Enjolras would tell him that going for walks in the dead of night is inadvisable, but they hunt monsters so he supposes that muggers in dark alleyways are the least of their worries. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I really thought you weren’t coming back,” Enjolras says again.

“You thought you’d got rid of me, huh? Were you relieved?” Grantaire says, and Enjolras really can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He struggles enough with that in broad daylight and complete sobriety; he has no chance right now.

“No,” he says with as much force as he can muster, because that is literally the opposite of what he’s trying to say and Grantaire should really shut up. “Don’t do it again.”

“...Alright,” Grantaire says after a pause. “I won’t.”

“Okay,” Enjolras replies, feeling satisfied. He’s pretty sure this conversation went okay.

He’s really too tired to worry about it right now, though.

He lets himself drift off to sleep.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You want this case?” Combeferre’s eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline. “No offense, Enjolras, but I generally send you to wherever I urgently need something stabbed, shot or set on fire, not reasoned with.”
> 
> “I can do reasoning,” Enjolras protests. “And I’m offering to. No one else will.”
> 
> \--
> 
> (Enjolras's version of events of [Chapter 7](http://archiveofourown.org/works/836606/chapters/1936077) of the main story)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is sort of part one of two - I'm hoping to write Enjolras's perspective of the Amsterdam arc, too.
> 
> If you like, come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.fivie.tumblr.com)!

 

 

~

Enjolras has a somewhat complicated relationship with the Musain.

On the one hand, he likes it and likes to be there, because it’s the single constant, unchanging place in his endlessly transient lifestyle – it’s not a _home,_ nothing like that, but it’s a comfort and a place of safety and he knows that, should he run into trouble, he can always go back there. And of course the Musain is where Combeferre is, and on this battlefield that his life has become, Combeferre is both his best friend and his strongest ally and, yes, they communicate via phone almost every day but Enjolras likes to see him in person as often as he can. It’s just better, somehow.

But on the other hand, almost every time he sets foot in the Musain, conversations halt, heads turn, and he finds himself on the receiving end of certain _looks._ The room will be full of hunters, just like him, but they don’t consider him _one of them,_ and have been telling him so since the moment he arrived in Paris. Some will smirk into their drinks and mutter something to their nearest comrade, earning a snort of derisive laughter. Enjolras imagines they have many names for him and he doesn’t much care to know what they are. Others will just glower with sullen, undisguised hostility. Enjolras has never fully understood what it is about him they dislike so much. All he knows is that _something_ about his presence puts a certain type of hunter very much on edge, and makes them want him gone.

Today is no different. The upper floor is fairly quiet, as most of the Musain’s patrons tend to trickle in after dark, but there are still the usual small clusters of worn-out looking men and women gathered at different tables, and at least half of them look up and seem to heave a collective sigh when he reaches the top of the stairs.

At first it isn’t as bad as usual, because Grantaire is right there beside him, and that really shouldn’t make him feel less vulnerable but he can’t deny that lately Grantaire’s presence has been doing exactly that. Maybe that’s natural, after ten months of travelling together and living in close quarters and watching each other’s back as they hunt monster after monster. Enjolras isn’t sure; he’s never been terribly good at understanding things like that. All he knows is that Grantaire calls him names to his face rather than whispering them behind his hand, and he can at least respect that kind of honesty.

However, Grantaire is quick to abandon him and head for the bar, despite it being barely past lunchtime. Enjolras knows he’ll only attract _more_ disdainful looks if he passes comment, and so he just goes silently to Combeferre’s table, making sure to look unhurried, like he can’t hear the whispers or feel the disapproving gazes burning into his back.

Combeferre, at least, greets him with a smile.

“Still alive, I see,” he says, pulling out a chair.

“I called you this morning,” Enjolras says as he sits down, smiling back despite himself.

“You did, but I know that if anyone can run into danger in the course of a morning, it’s you,” Combeferre says, but it’s fond and he’s only joking and doing so in such a way that even Enjolras can be sure. “No trouble in Dreux?”

“Apart from Grantaire turning his back on a zombie and nearly getting himself killed? No, none.” Enjolras shoots Grantaire a small glare which goes entirely unnoticed.

“I’m sure he knew you’d save him,” Combeferre says, sounding amused.

“He’s so careless sometimes.” And Enjolras doesn’t _understand_ that, like he doesn’t understand so many things about Grantaire, because sometimes he’s almost scarily competent, and then other times he makes stupid mistakes like _that,_ like he doesn’t even _care,_ like there’s no danger at all, and it just doesn’t make sense.

“I think he pays a lot more attention than any of us know.”

“Do you?”

“I do.” Combeferre nods. He looks like he’s holding in laughter. “He certainly keeps you out of trouble.”

“I keep myself out of trouble,” Enjolras argues, indignant.

“Alright, he keeps you out of _hospital_.”

“He- what? No. He’s not my bodyguard or, I don’t know, my minder or something.”

“He’s not a useless bystander either, though, is he?”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me.”

“This isn’t about your competence. You’re an excellent hunter and you’re getting better all the time,” Combeferre says mildly. “But, despite the odd circumstances under which this partnership was formed, I sleep better at night knowing you have Grantaire with you.”

“I was doing just fine on my own,” Enjolras mutters. He doesn’t want to admit that maybe he sleeps better these days too – feels safer, even – because it’s _stupid_ of him, and he knows it. It’s been nearly a year and he still hardly knows any more about Grantaire than he did when they first met – only that he was once a soldier who deserted an unspecified army, and a deeply religious man who, somewhere along the way, lost his faith. He still knows nothing about the origins of the blade Grantaire handed over to him so willingly, or how he got into hunting, or the real reason that he made the seemingly random decision to start travelling with him. The only real proof he has that Grantaire is trustworthy is, basically, the fact that it’s been ten months and all Grantaire has done in that time is help him kill monsters, force him to eat breakfast, make bad jokes and get falling-down drunk. It’s not the most stellar resume in the world, but it’s also not the profile of some master criminal.

Still, there’s no denying that he walked in here today and felt, for a moment, like he could stare down all these hunters who resent his presence, purely because he had Grantaire next to him. And that’s just plain _uncomfortable._

“Don’t sulk,” Combeferre says, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze. “I already told you that I’m not questioning your competence. I just think it’s good for you to have some human company, at the very least. It’s helped you, I think. You seem more lively these days.”

“Permanently exasperated, you mean?”

“Or that.” Combeferre does laugh this time. “But really, I’m glad the whole strange situation turned out so well. I didn’t like you hunting alone.” His voice drops in volume. “That’s how you end up like some of these miserable old bastards.”

Enjolras starts slightly. Sometimes he forgets that Combeferre is capable of being anything besides perfectly agreeable and polite. Combeferre just shoots him a furtive smile and turns back to his ever-present laptop.

The table is, as always, completely covered in books and papers, but there are three neat piles of brown folders that Enjolras is particularly interested in. He figured out what these are long ago: the pile on the right is cases that haven’t been assigned yet, the one on the left is cases that _have_ been assigned and are waiting to be handed over or emailed to the respective hunters, and the one in the middle is cases that Combeferre has looked at but hasn’t quite been able to find a suitable candidate for. Naturally, this is usually the pile Enjolras steals first. There’s only one folder in it today.

“That’s not for you,” Combeferre says without even taking his eyes off the screen.

“It’s not for anyone right now,” Enjolras replies smugly, flipping it open. “Ghost activity? What’s so difficult about that, that you don’t know who to send?”

“Firstly, it might be nothing, so it’s not my top priority,” Combeferre says. “Secondly, it’s one of those somewhat awkward cases where strange things are happening but no one’s been hurt. If it’s a rare case of a non-malevolent spirit, I’d hate to send someone who’d only pick a fight and _make_ it angry.” He pauses. “Of course, the problem is that that’s what everyone wants to do.”

“If we’re not going to salt and burn the remains, then what are we supposed to do?” Enjolras asks. “Even if a ghost isn’t malevolent, I’m sure we still want rid of it.”

“There are other ways,” Combeferre says patiently. “I know you’re used to going up against ghosts that have nothing but vengeance and killing on their minds, but not all spirits are out for blood. Some of them are trying to tell us something. Or they’re trapped here. Or they don’t even know they’re dead. Some of them just need help.”

Enjolras nods but is only vaguely aware that he’s doing so.

He’s thinking of Smolensk, of the ghost children that he just wanted to get rid of so that they could move on, of how the means didn’t matter to him because it was the end result that counted. He’s thinking of the way Grantaire _looked_ at him when he lit up their bones.

“...You could call Jehan,” he says finally. “He wouldn’t make it angry. He’d be happy just to talk to it.”

“Prouvaire?” Combeferre looks up in surprise. “He’s not a hunter, Enjolras. I know he can take care of himself but I wouldn’t send him on a job on his own, in case things turned bad.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you send him alone,” Enjolras says with a frown.

Combeferre looks at him questioningly. He sighs.

“He’s the only psychic I’d want to work with,” he says. “I know you have others in your contact list, but I don’t know them well enough. Jehan’s a friend. And I know he’s good.”

“You want this case?” Combeferre’s eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline. “No offense, Enjolras, but I generally send you to wherever I urgently need something stabbed, shot or set on fire, not reasoned with.”

“I can do reasoning,” Enjolras protests. “And I’m offering to. No one else will.”

“...Why?” Combeferre is looking at him like he’s concerned he might be ill. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing!” Enjolras insists. “I’m offering to take a case that you know nobody else will want. What’s wrong with that?”

“I looked at this file this morning and laughed when I thought about what your reaction would be if I asked you to take it,” Combeferre says quite frankly. “Because negotiation isn’t your style. Because you want to protect humanity by fighting, not talking. I know you, Enjolras. Under normal circumstances, you would beg me to give you anything but this.”

“Just let me try, okay?” Enjolras snaps in frustration. “I got into this life under the assumption that there was a clean line between ‘human’ and ‘evil’. And that’s what I was _taught._ No one ever told me there could be exceptions, and before now, I don’t think I would have believed them even if they had. But...I don’t know. Maybe I still have things to learn. I just want to _see_.”

Combeferre studies him for a long moment. Enjolras does not miss the way that his eyes flick briefly towards Grantaire, who is still sitting at the bar and is presumably oblivious to this conversation. Because _of course_ Combeferre can see right through him; of course Combeferre knows that he never would have budged an inch on this matter if it had been up to him alone-

“Do not say a _word_ ,” Enjolras grinds out. To his horror, he can feel his face heating up.

“...If I call Jehan today, he’s going to need some time to make preparations and then travel here,” Combeferre says instead of humiliating him further. “It might be a few days before he gets here.”

“That’s fine.”

“What are you going to tell Grantaire about the delay?” Combeferre asks. Enjolras pauses.

“I don’t know,” he says. “That you’re still collecting information, I suppose.”

“Oh, you’re going to make it look like I’m causing the hold-up?” Combeferre shakes his head, obviously amused. “Honestly, just tell him the truth.”

“No,” Enjolras says. He almost winces at how petulantly it comes out. “And don’t you tell him, either.”

“Why not? I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

“Exactly,” Enjolras says dully, getting to his feet. “He’d be insufferable.”

He crosses the room and taps Grantaire’s shoulder to get his attention.

(And they’re strange about that, aren’t they? It’s been ten months and yet Enjolras can count on his fingers the number of times they’ve actually touched each other, and he really isn’t sure which one of them threw up that barrier, which one is holding back, or why. Shoulder-taps seem to be safe, at least. He wonders if Grantaire just dislikes physical contact. If that’s the case, meeting Jehan could be quite the experience for him, if Jehan isn’t feeling too shy.)

“You done?” Grantaire asks. He has his hand curled round a half-empty glass of amber liquid (rum, whiskey?) but his eyes are clear and his speech is even, and that’s a relief. Enjolras never knows how to deal with him when he’s drunk. All he’s learned is that getting angry doesn’t help at all.

“For now. We’re going to be here a few days,” he replies. His gaze moves away from Grantaire’s eyes and down to a random spot near his left shoulder, and that’s bad. It should be easy to look him in the face and tell such a minor lie. The only people he can’t lie to are Courfeyrac and Combeferre and he doesn’t know why that small group is apparently expanding to include Grantaire.

“How come?” Grantaire asks, naturally, because normally he barely has time to sit down in the Musain before Enjolras is dragging him back out again and towards the train station.

“Combeferre thinks he has a case for us, but he wants time to gather more information before he sends us out.” His voice sounds stilted and unnatural even to his own ears and- Just. Shit. Fuck.

But he has to lie, because the truth is something he doesn’t even really want to examine himself because it’s so utterly incomprehensible. There’s no way on this Earth he could stand here in front of Grantaire and say ‘we’ll be here a few days because we’re waiting for the psychic I specifically requested because I couldn’t take it that time I did what I thought was the right thing and you looked at me as if I was the monster. You probably don’t even remember but you did and you were so angry and maybe I want to see if you were right and _maybe_ I want to prove to you that I’m not as thoughtless and callously single-minded as you seem to think, and-’

“Yeah?” He isn’t sure if Grantaire sounds doubtful or if that’s just his own traitorous mind. “Sounds to me like he’s slipping. Where are we going, then, once we’ve got all the necessary data?”

“Amsterdam.” And that’s the truth, at least; he can say that with some confidence, thank God.

Grantaire’s face breaks into a grin, and it makes Enjolras’s heart do something utterly ridiculous and inexplicable. Grantaire’s smiles are rare things. Enjolras doesn’t think his more common self-deprecating or mocking approximations really count.

“No way,” he says brightly. “It’s been a while since we’ve been somewhere fun.”

Enjolras is torn between rolling his eyes and reminding him that it doesn’t matter where they’re going – one place is much the same as any other when you’re there to hunt – and another option which has been creeping up on him lately – the strangely tempting option to not wipe the smile off Grantaire’s face, and to honestly ask what it is about certain places that makes him consider them more ‘fun’ than others, because that’s something Enjolras has never understood either. A city is a city, to him.

He doesn’t get to choose either option, though. A voice from further down the bar interrupts his train of thought.

“Fun? You’re going to _hunt_ ,” it says. “Not to get your little pricks wet in the damn red-light district.”

Enjolras stiffens from head to foot. He feels his face automatically begin to morph into an expression of indignant fury, but he catches himself, stops. He knows that voice, he knows this man, and he knows he’d like nothing more than to get a rise out of him. He will not give him the satisfaction of seeing him insulted.

Grantaire, though – he doesn’t know the situation. He turns to the man with a look of mocking, wide-eyed surprise.

“Is that your idea of fun?” he asks, and his voice is smooth and easy but _cold,_ and Enjolras can’t help but be confused because Grantaire makes fun of him all the time but he never talks to him like _that._ “You dirty old man.”

The hunter and all his nearby comrades shoot them scathing glares. Their looks are full of such disgust, and Enjolras hates it but he’s _used to it,_ but he’s never noticed them turn that look on Grantaire before. He’s struck with the sudden, horrible thought that maybe they think Grantaire _knows,_ that they think Grantaire is on his side and is defending him.

“Not that anyone asked you in the first place. I forgot old bastards like you think everyone else should be just as miserable as you are.” Grantaire is still talking and Enjolras wants to tell him to stop, that this is an old quarrel and he shouldn’t get involved.

“Shut your fucking mouth, boy.”

“Or what?” Grantaire sits up a little straighter and Enjolras sees the old hunter, a hardened individual if ever there was one, shrink back. He’s not surprised. There’s something strangely, indefinably scary about Grantaire when he’s lured out of apathy and into anger. Enjolras understands this from a strictly objective point of view. He’s never been scared by it himself, because that would suggest he thinks Grantaire would ever hurt him.

Not to be defeated utterly, the old man is still muttering to himself.

“Call yourselves hunters?” he says spitefully. “You don’t know the meaning of the word. It’s a game to smart-ass kids like you.”

That, more than anything, makes Enjolras’s temper flare, because it is far from a game to him, but it just makes Grantaire roll his eyes scornfully and lose his hostile stance. Enjolras wonders if he’s even aware that he does that. It was one of a few things that made him suspect Grantaire had some kind of military background even before Grantaire told him that was the case.

“Yeah, yeah, young whippersnappers like us should respect our elders, I know,” he drawls, clearly losing interest in the quarrel. In hindsight, Enjolras will think that the whole thing could have ended there and then if he’d just kept quiet, but he feels like he’s been standing with his mouth shut like some browbeaten schoolchild for quite long enough. Part of him just wants to retort to this old bastard who likes to go out of his way to make his life unpleasant. And part of him wants to show Grantaire that this is _his_ problem, that he’s the reason a man they don’t even know the name of wants to argue with them, and that Grantaire doesn’t have to be part of it because it’s not him these people have an issue with.

“Sir, I can assure you that the job is always our priority,” he says. He gets exactly the reaction he expected; an onslaught of angry and not terribly articulate insults, a hand waving in his face, and all of the man’s unflattering attention focused on him. Which is fair. Well, no, it’s not fair. But since it’s him that these hunters have decided doesn’t belong here, it’s something close to fair that he should be the only one to bear the brunt of their dislike.

He doesn’t pay any particular attention to what the man is actually saying – he’s heard it all before. As a result he doesn’t have a specially tailored comeback prepared, but he does open his mouth to tell the old hunter to go fuck himself, which would probably have been more effective than any cuttingly eloquent response he might have concocted. The words never get a chance to leave his mouth, though. He’s startled by a sudden blur of movement – at first he isn’t sure what’s happening, but a split second later everything is still again, and the old hunter’s face is now dripping with beer that was, until a moment previously, in his glass, and Grantaire has him by the throat.

_No, by the collar,_ Enjolras corrects himself hastily, but for a moment there it really did look like Grantaire had just struck like a cobra at the man’s throat and was two seconds away from tearing his windpipe out. He’s _fast_ when he wants to be, and Enjolras knew that already but he’s never seen Grantaire use it like this before. He’s smiling but his blue eyes are flat and cold and frankly terrifying. Enjolras, who can do little more than stare, wonders what the hell the old man had been saying.

“It sounds like you have some things to get off your chest,” Grantaire says, still smiling, still scary. The man is spluttering in his grip, and Enjolras hears the screech of all his friends shoving their chairs back as they get to their feet.

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” the old man says, fixing his gaze on Enjolras once again. “At least the rest of us can fight our own damn battles. Travel alone, hunt alone. You needed to hire the fucking resident drunk here to be your bodyguard.”

Enjolras knows, then, that this isn’t going to end quietly. The anger is like a fire in him, in his head and in his chest,and he grits his teeth because there are so many ways he wants to retort to that, so many things he wants to shout at all these people-

_He’s not with me because I can’t make it on my own, I don’t even know exactly why he’s with me but I think it’s something to do with it being_ better  _not to be alone, but in the end it doesn’t matter, it’s none of your business._

_And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last ten months it’s that he’s so much more than the Musain’s resident drunk so don’t you_ dare call him that-!

In the end, what he says, in a voice so calm that it surprises even himself, is:

“Let the man go, Grantaire.”

“You sure?” says Grantaire, who makes no sense, who is always the first to mock Enjolras but also the first to leap to his defence. “Sounds to me like maybe he’s got more to say.”

“Let him go,” Enjolras repeats.

Grantaire shrugs and does so, because when it comes down to it he always gives Enjolras what he wants. He’ll defy him and taunt him when it’s something small and unimportant, when he’s bored and maybe wants attention, but when things are serious or dangerous he obeys, he follows, and Enjolras wants to ask him _why_ but not right now. Right now, he’s done with talking, and all he wants to do is break this guy’s nose.

So he does.

There is a very brief moment of stunned silence after he throws his punch. The old hunter reels, clutching his nose with one hand, blood seeping between his fingers. Just before chaos erupts – more chairs screeching back across the floor, furious shouts, fists and boots and maybe a knife or two – Enjolras catches a glimpse of Grantaire’s astonished face. It occurs to him that Grantaire probably has no idea why he just hit that man, and he decides that it should stay that way.

Confusion about his motives doesn’t stop Grantaire joining him in the ensuing fray, though. And that was definitely not the point of this, the point was to remove Grantaire from this dispute, not to have him very publicly jump to his feet to fight back-to-back with Enjolras, like they’re a team in this like they are in hunting, but it’s hard to worry about these things when you’re outnumbered three to one. They’re good at fighting together, and they’re both probably about half the age of most of their opponents, but there’s no such thing as a hunter that can’t hold their own in a fight, and they make a pretty good account of themselves but that doesn’t stop them from taking a few knocks in return. Enjolras’s nose is wet with blood, his mouth is throbbing (he expects that’s bleeding too) and his knuckles are going to be purple tomorrow, but most of the people around him are looking a lot worse and he finds he’s quite satisfied by that. He thinks that things are going to get really messy when he sees one man reach inside his coat for what may or may not be a gun, but then a fist that is neither his nor Grantaire’s comes out of nowhere and sends that man sprawling.

Enjolras – and everyone else, as far as he can see – stops and blinks as Combeferre flexes his hand a few times, looking down at his dazed, fallen victim with an expression of distaste.

“Enjolras, Grantaire,” he says, gathering up his belongings. “Let’s take this elsewhere.”

He shoots Enjolras a warning look, silently telling him to do as he’s told, but it isn’t necessary. Enjolras is pretty sure they’re done here. Combeferre heads for the stairs and they follow him. Enjolras chances a quick look at Grantaire and sees that he doesn’t seem to have fared too badly – a small cut on his cheekbone, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, but no serious damage. He’s also looking at Combeferre with a mystified but impressed expression. Enjolras knows the feeling. Combeferre looks so comfortable behind his computer, surrounded by piles of books and maps, with his glasses perched on his nose that it’s very easy to forget that he was raised a hunter.

It hardly takes them a minute to get outside, but that’s long enough for a leaden feeling to settle in Enjolras’s chest as he thinks about what he just did – the _implications_ of what he just did. He upset the very delicate balance that they’d managed to maintain for the past three or so years, certainly. And he made two people stand up and throw punches like they’re his allies – like they’ve taken his _side_. Lines have been drawn and that isn’t fair. The Musain is Combeferre’s centre of operations and the last thing he needs is dissent in the ranks.

“...You shouldn’t take sides in this,” Enjolras mutters to him, because apologising would be too much to bear at this point, and thanking him would be even worse. “They all need your help too.”

“Maybe. But not even I’m immune to a little favouritism,” Combeferre replies. He doesn’t sound angry, which is a surprise but not an unpleasant one. Enjolras starts slightly when he pats him on the shoulder; he looks up and sees Combeferre smiling at him, and he isn’t sure what to make of that.

Combeferre steers them towards his flat because it’s closest and people are looking at their bloody faces and giving them a wide berth. Once they’re inside he directs Enjolras and Grantaire to the bathroom and then says something about finding his first aid kit before leaving them there. Which Enjolras thinks is very unfair. Somehow it’s much harder to ignore the fact that he just initiated a bar brawl because a man looked down his nose at Grantaire when they’re alone in a room together. He busies himself with washing the blood from his face at the sink.

“So.” Grantaire sounds bemused and slightly cautious. “What was that all about?”

Maybe he means _why did you lose your temper and pick a fight, that’s not like you?_ Or _why was that asshole harassing us in the first place?_ Or _why was pretty much everyone in the Musain so quick to join the punch-up, and not in our favour either?_

Enjolras isn’t sure which question he’d prefer to answer.

“It’s nothing new. They don’t like me. They never have,” he says, because Grantaire might as well know that much now. He states it as a fact, because that’s what it is. Never mind that it’s a fucking _disaster,_ because those people are hunters just like him, they’re supposed to have a common goal and he should be able to call on any of them for help, but he suspects that most of them would quite happily leave him to die if a hunt went south. Never mind that people have been telling him he doesn’t belong his whole life and that he’s _sick of it._ He prods at the cut on his lip and it only makes it hurt more but that’s alright, somehow.

“Yeah, well, don’t you worry,” Grantaire says. Enjolras blinks as he pulls his hands away from his mouth. “The fucking resident drunk likes you just fine.”

And oh, that hurts, hearing that insult from Grantaire’s mouth, because that means he _listened_ when that bastard at the Musain said it, maybe means that it hurt him. And yet, despite the sting of that, Enjolras can’t help but feel a stupid spark of warmth, too – _you like me? Even though you laugh and tell me I’m wrong at every turn, you like me? Or is this just part of your teasing too?_

“I’m sorry that they’ve decided that you are, by association, now deserving of their disdain,” he says finally, because he _is._ That isn’t what he wanted.

Grantaire just snorts as he folds up a long strip of tissue and wets it under the cold water.

“You think I want the approval of guys like that anyway?” he says. Enjolras tries not to jump or wince when he presses the tissue firmly but gently against his cut mouth. He means to reach up and hold it there himself, but Grantaire’s thumb is absent-mindedly brushing back and forth along his jaw and he quite forgets to move.

“I mean,” Grantaire goes on, “his idea of fun in Amsterdam is the red-light district. That’s a city of culture, you know? What a barbarian.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. He supposes he should have known better than to expect this conversation to stay serious for very long. Combeferre joins them a moment later, carrying a first aid kit.

“They don’t understand you, is the issue, Enjolras,” he says, suggesting that he was never, in fact, out of earshot. “Your motives don’t make sense to them. They’ve lost everything and they hunt out of spite. For them, killing is its own reward. You hunt to save people. To make a difference. They hate the world. It probably offends them that you want to save it.”

“Is that why Enjolras is your favourite?” Grantaire asks with a grin.

“There are plenty of reasons why Enjolras is my favourite. His ability to hold a decent conversation about things other than hunting is definitely one of them,” Combeferre says, and God, Enjolras is so thankful for him. He can’t imagine how difficult and unpleasant his life would be if Combeferre disliked him too.  “Alright, let’s see the damage.”

He is as thorough and efficient in checking them over as he is in everything else he does. He declares Enjolras’s nose to be unbroken and decides that, while both of them look a bit of a mess, neither of them are really badly hurt. He swipes an antiseptic wipe over Enjolras’s bloody knuckles and remarks that it’s impressive that the two of them have gone four hunts without serious injuries, and yet manage to get themselves beaten bloody in what is meant to be their safe-house. Grantaire replies with some quip or other, but Enjolras barely hears him.

“I can’t even get my supposed allies to be on my side,” he says sullenly. “What a mess.”

“You’re not the problem,” Combeferre assures him as he starts to pack away his somewhat depleted medical supplies. “Those guys, they’re of the old generation. They owe allegiance to no one. You’re young and optimistic and passionate. And that confuses them so much that they can’t help but hate it. Anyway, they’re a minority.”

“A loud and influential minority,” Enjolras says unhappily. Combeferre claps him on the shoulder and holds his gaze almost sternly.

“Feuilly took one look at you and knew you’d be great,” he says. “Bahorel, too, though he’d rather poke pins in his eyes than tell you so. And you know I have every faith in you.”

“And Grantaire still thinks that an office job would have been a much better idea,” Grantaire puts in. “But I’ll admit you are disturbingly good at killing things.”

“You think I’m stupid,” Enjolras mutters. He looks away because Combeferre just _had_ to mention Feuilly, and there isn’t a day that goes by that Enjolras doesn’t wonder if Feuilly would be proud of him or if he could never forgive him for not being there to save him, and he can’t show that kind of weakness in front of Grantaire because if Grantaire tried to tease him about _that_ he’d probably have to kill him.

“How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not stupid. You’re _ridiculous._ ”

“What does that make you?” Enjolras snaps, and he doesn’t mean to, but he really needs Grantaire to stop it because he can’t tell if he’s being cruel or just teasingly kind at the best of times, and today he’s already a mess.

“Doubly ridiculous for following you around anyway,” Grantaire replies smartly.

“Don’t quarrel, children,” Combeferre says. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh at them. Enjolras quite suddenly feels like he wants to be alone.

“I’m going back to the hotel,” he says with a sigh. “Sorry if we caused you any trouble.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Combeferre says. “They had it coming, really. Though you’ve never risen to their bait before. What was different about today?”

“Nothing,” Enjolras replies immediately. As soon as the word leaves his mouth, he realises that he answered far too quickly to be convincing. He flounders. “Just. No, nothing, really.”

“Okay.” Combeferre says, turning away. “Like I said, they had it coming.”

“Right,” Enjolras mutters before hurrying from the premises.

~

He wakes the next morning to find approximately half of his face covered in blotchy bruises in a particularly fetching shade of purple. The cut on his lip is scabbed over but his whole mouth feels swollen and tender, and everything hurts. Everything. He’s a fast healer and he knows it’ll all start to fade over the next few days, but this isn’t the state he’d wanted Jehan to find him in after so much time apart. It doesn’t improve his mood much to see that Grantaire appears to have got off almost completely unscathed; the small cuts linger on his face, but he isn’t covered in bruises. He seems _immune_ to bruising. Or maybe he’s just a better fighter. Enjolras can’t help but be envious, whatever the case.

After breakfast, he slips away to the roof of their hotel to call Courfeyrac, as he’d promised he would. They have an agreement (though Enjolras didn’t technically _agree_ to it) that if no one in Lyon hears from him for a period of seven consecutive days, Courfeyrac will call the police, give them Enjolras’s last known location, and tell them _everything._ Which is likely to see Enjolras confined to a psychiatric ward, if they actually found him. He really thinks it’s a bit of an extreme measure, but to its credit, he’s never once forgotten to call.

He glances around as he waits for Courfeyrac to answer. He probably isn’t meant to be up here, but it’s hardly the most illegal thing he’s ever done. It’s hard to get privacy in a shared hotel room, is the problem. Not that he and Courfeyrac tend to talk about anything particularly confidential; it’s just that the idea of having one of their easy, light-hearted conversations in front of Grantaire seems incredibly weird to him. It’s a strange and sort of unfortunate thing. In the beginning, when he distrusted Grantaire, when it was all about posturing and showing he was not someone to be fucked with, he feels he accidentally created some very cold, harsh and unfeeling persona for himself. He’s finding it very hard to break that mould now.

_“Hello?”_

He starts when Courfeyrac finally picks up. He sounds uncertain but hopeful – Enjolras changes phones too often for anyone in Lyon to keep updated with his number.

“Hey, it’s me,” he says, bracing himself – though not without a smile – for the inevitable shrieking to come. He calls _every week,_ but his friends never seem to be less excited about it.

_“It_ is _you! I knew it was you! I had a_ feeling,” Courfeyrac exclaims gleefully. His voice becomes slightly fainter as he apparently leans away from the phone. _“Joly, Bossuet! Maaaaaariuuuuuus! It’s Enjolras!”_

“Everyone’s there?” Enjolras asks.

_“Yeah, last night we were out and there were shots and then we decided we should have a_ sleepover,” Courfeyrac explains and Enjolras is not even remotely surprised. “ _Everyone, say hi!”_

There’s the sound of thundering footsteps and then a chorus of hellos. Enjolras lets himself grin like an idiot because there’s no one here to see. He can pick out their individual voices; Bossuet sounds like he’s in the grip of a particularly hideous hangover, Marius just sounds sleepy, and Joly sounds like he’s still drunk. He’s by far the liveliest.

_“Enjolraaaas!”_ he chirps happily. _“We’re having pizza for breakfast! You should come join us.”_

“I’m in Paris,” Enjolras tells him, laughing.

_“That’s not so far, compared to most of the places you call us from,”_ Courfeyrac says. _“You going to drop in to see us anytime soon?”_

“I’m headed to Amsterdam soon. Probably tomorrow,” Enjolras says apologetically.

_“You need a vacation before you burn out,”_ Courfeyrac groans.

_“What’s in Amsterdam, Enjolras?”_ Joly asks in the background.

“We don’t know for sure yet. Maybe nothing. We’re just going to have a look around.”

_“You hear that? Place your bets now, folks,”_ Courfeyrac says.

_“It’s a ghost,”_ Joly declares. _“It’s always a ghost. Like, ninety per cent of the time.”_

_“The last few haven’t been ghosts,”_ Marius points out.

_“It doesn’t matter what I think, it never turns out to be what I think,”_ Bossuet laughs. _“But I’m a glutton for punishment so I’ll take a guess anyway.”_

_“Fetch the box, Marius!”_ Courfeyrac instructs. _“The box, the box!”_

“What’s happening?” Enjolras asks, at a loss.

_“We like to place bets on what you’ll be going up against next,”_ Courfeyrac tells him.

“Seriously.”

_“Hey, if you’re going to get yourself eaten by a werewolf, one of us might as well profit from it,”_ Courfeyrac says. _“We all make a guess, we all put some money in our magical Enjolras Versus The Paranormal box, and whoever’s right wins the grand total. Unless we’re all wrong, which happens a lot. Then the money carries over to next time.”_

“You’ve really got this figured out.”

_“We’ve been running this gambling ring for a while, my friend. Marius is surprisingly good at it, actually. Wait, has he been cheating? Has he been secretly calling you for clues?”_

“No,” Enjolras laughs. “Marius and I are not embroiled in a secret bet-fixing scheme.”

_“Well, as long as that’s the case. Cosette and_ _Éponine already aren’t allowed to bet because, y’know, they have insider knowledge of these things.”_

“Are they not there just now?” Enjolras asks. “I would’ve thought at least Cosette would have been invited to your sleepover party.”

_“No,”_ he hears Joly say sulkily. _“This was a strictly boys-only sleepover.”_

_“Yeah, uh, Cosette,_ _Éponine and Musichetta have become very close-knit of late,”_ Courfeyrac says, sounding amused. _“They were having a girls’ night last night. At Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta’s flat. The poor boys were kicked out of their home, Enjolras! What could I do, besides get them drunk then bring them back here to eat ice cream and watch dinosaur documentaries?”_

“You’re right,” Enjolras says. “That was the only thing to do.”

_“Enjolras,”_ Joly pipes up again. Enjolras wonders if Bossuet and Marius have fallen asleep. _“Why do you always_ phone _us like it’s the_ nineties? _You- you should Skype. We want to see your_ face.”

“Hotel wi-fi isn’t the greatest,” Enjolras tells him. It’s actually fine at this hotel, but it would be pretty hard for him to inconspicuously smuggle his laptop up to the roof. “Anyway, you really don’t want to see my face right now.”

_“Woah. What. What does that mean?”_ Courfeyrac interjects. _“What happened? Did you get mauled by a monster? Are you okay? You sound okay. But are you?”_

“I’m fine, I’m good,” Enjolras assures him. “It wasn’t anything to do with a hunt, I just…I sort of got into a fight.”

There’s a pause.

_“A fight?”_ Courfeyrac repeats finally. _“Like a fist-fight? With, like, a person?”_

“Technically it was, uh, people. Plural.”

_“What.”_

“Look, it just sort of happened, I just…I got mad,” Enjolras says, raking a hand through his hair.

_“You mean you_ picked _the fight?”_

“I threw the first punch, but that doesn’t mean I picked the fight.” Enjolras sighs and glances at his bruised knuckles. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll try to Skype when my face is sort of a normal colour again.”

_“So where was Grantaire while you were getting your ass handed to you?”_

Enjolras glowers at the phone. Another reason that he likes to conduct these calls out of Grantaire’s earshot is that Courfeyrac always seems to want to talk _about_ Grantaire.

“He was there,” he answers shortly. He doesn’t say that Grantaire was the reason he started throwing punches in the first place, because he knows exactly what Courfeyrac will read into that, and it’s something he’s not quite ready to hear put into words.

_“And how’s his face looking today?”_

“Better than mine,” Enjolras admits grudgingly. “He got away with a few scrapes. And we did not get our asses handed to us, considering how outnumbered we were I think we did pretty well…”

_“Aww, he jumped in to help you, didn’t he?”_ Courfeyrac coos. _“Man, the more I hear about the guy, the more I like him. Did you two tenderly tend to each other’s wounds after?”_

“No,” Enjolras says, and he isn’t thinking about the gentle pressure of a cool cloth against his cut lip, and he definitely isn’t thinking about Grantaire’s thumb on his jaw.

_“Can I pretend you did, then? It fits a lot better with the romantic, sexually-charged narrative I am mentally composing about your travels.”_

“Courfeyrac,” Enjolras groans.

_“What? It’s very tasteful, I promise.”_

“I’ve told you about a hundred times, there is no romance. There is no…anything.”

_“I’m hardly going to just take your word for that, though, am I? You wouldn’t know romance if it hit you in the face with a shovel. You’d just think you had heartburn or something.”_

“That’s not true,” Enjolras protests.

_“It kind of is,”_ Joly puts in unhelpfully.

_“Same goes for sexual tension,”_ Courfeyrac goes on. _“I bet there’s sexual tension in_ spades. _I bet even the monsters you guys fight want you two to jump each other’s bones.”_

“ _Courfeyrac!_ ” Enjolras splutters again, mortified.

_“I bet it’s true.”_

“It’s _not_! Why are you so fixated on this?”

_“Because it just fits_ _so well! I know what you’re like. You were never going to just, like, meet some nice, likeable guy in class or at work and go for coffee with him and then date and then get married and buy a house together. You need something more_ dramatic. _And what could be more dramatic than a mysterious, dark stranger who appears from nowhere to risk his life to fight by your side against the monstrous agents of the supernatural?”_ Courfeyrac makes a theatrical swooning noise. _“It’s perfect.”_

“Except that this is reality, and not some teen fantasy novel,” Enjolras says sourly.

_“Hey, Joly, could you go check on the pizza?”_ Courfeyrac asks. _“Incorrectly reheated pizza is a lead cause of food poisoning, I hear.”_

Enjolras hears Joly squeak and scuttle off to the kitchen.

_“Okay, now that we’re alone…”_ Courfeyrac says after a moment.

“Where are Marius and Bossuet?” Enjolras asks.

_“Oh, they’re both passed out on the couch. Anyway. Twilight-esque fantasies aside, I do have my reasons for continually mentioning this whole thing with you and Grantaire.”_

“This whole thing that doesn’t exist,” Enjolras says. “What might those reasons be, then?”

_“Well, I was only playing at first, because I’ve missed those exasperated sighs of yours.”_ Courfeyrac laughs a little. _“But. You get so flustered.”_

“What? No I don’t,” Enjolras retorts far too defensively. He winces.

_“You totally do! You get all embarrassed and squirmy. And you’ve only done that one other time in the whole time I’ve known you. And I’ve known you a_ long _time, Enjolras.”_

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Enjolras says, but he does. He can feel his face heating up just thinking about it.

_“Sure you do. First year of university. Your little sexuality crisis.”_

“You said you’d never make fun of me about that,” Enjolras says crossly.

_“I’m not making fun! I’m being totally serious here! I do that sometimes!”_ Courfeyrac protests. _“Honestly, I’m not making fun of you. This is very relevant. But remember, you had the slight crisis because you always thought that crushes were not a thing that happened to you and you were happy with that-”_

“Yes, Courfeyrac, I remember.”

_“But then there was that post-grad student at the debate society, and he had those eyes and that jaw and that burning passion for freedom and equality-”_

“Yes, okay.”

_“And he was like, mentoring you and stuff and then you started freaking out because you were having emotions and-”_

“ _Yes,_ Courfeyrac, I remember, I was _there._ ”

_“Right, so, that was the_ only _other time you’ve ever got flustered about me doing my ‘Enjolras has a boyfriend’ dance. The only other time!”_

“What does this have to do with Grantaire?” Enjolras asks wearily. Courfeyrac gives a muted screech of frustration.

_“I’m saying that it only gets a rise out of you when there are actual feelings involved!”_ he says. _“That’s why I won’t let it go! Pay attention, Enjolras, you may be having an emotion. Or two, even.”_

“It’s not like that,” Enjolras argues, because yes, there are certainly a lot of emotions he associates with Grantaire, but they are generally things like confusion, exasperation and annoyance, not whatever Courfeyrac is thinking. Maybe he feels safer with Grantaire at his side, and maybe the thought of Grantaire leaving fills him with black dread, and maybe he’s currently stuck in Paris waiting for Jehan to arrive purely because he feels like he has something to prove to Grantaire, but that doesn’t _mean_ anything.

_“Look, you don’t need to talk to me about it if you don’t want to,”_ Courfeyrac is saying. _“I mean, maybe you really do think there’s nothing there. I’m just flagging this up to you, okay? Because as I remember, nothing ever happened with hot post-grad guy because you were too busy panicking about the fact that you were having feelings to actually, you know, do anything about it.”_

“Yeah, okay,” Enjolras says, cheeks burning.

_“And I get it, you like things to be clean-cut and black and white. It must be kind of scary that this is sort of a grey area for you…if you’ll excuse the pun…”_

“Courfeyrac, I really don’t want to talk about this,” Enjolras says, perhaps a little sharply.

_“Okay, okay, sorry. Oh, here comes Joly with pizza, anyway.”_

“I should get going. Enjoy your breakfast-pizza.”

_“Aw, alright. Goodbye! We love you!”_

_“Lots and lots!”_ Joly puts in.

Enjolras says goodbye and hangs up. He sighs as he starts back down the stairs to his room. Normally calling his friends will lift his spirits, even on a bad day, but that particular call has left him feeling harassed and somewhat drained.

He tries to read but finds it difficult to focus on the words on the page. His mind seems intent upon replaying everything Courfeyrac said about two hundred times, and no matter how hard he tries to block it out with his book of Nordic runes, he doesn’t quite manage. Because he’s known for a while now that his feelings towards Grantaire are strange and confusing and different to his feelings towards pretty much everybody else he knows, but he’d assumed it was because he’s never _met_ anyone else quite like Grantaire before, and then he’d firmly shoved it from his mind. He’d certainly never thought of it like _that,_ but now that Courfeyrac has planted the idea in his head, he can’t quite shake it, and although he continues sitting and ostensibly reading his book, the very image of tranquillity, inside his mind he is fast becoming a stressed, frazzled mess.

Grantaire is unfortunate enough to bear the brunt of his inner turmoil when, out of nowhere, he asks about Bahorel. Enjolras does not want to talk about Bahorel.

“You’re making me more curious by not telling me,” Grantaire says when he tries to be vague and evasive about it, hoping they can drop the subject. “Now I think it’s something scandalous.”

“Seriously?” Enjolras sighs.

“Was it a forbidden love affair?”

“A forbidden-?” Enjolras starts to repeat until what Grantaire said actually sinks in. Grantaire is most likely joking, but still Enjolras’s temper flares and he slams his book down on the table in front of him, sick to death of talk of romance and love affairs. “No! I swear, what _is it_ with people and dreaming up a love-life for me?”

Grantaire, of course, just laughs at him and his indignant fury. Enjolras has found that it is almost impossible to get Grantaire to take him seriously at times like this. As usual, all he can do is glower at him and wait for him to stop chortling.

“I’m sorry, I forgot you were on the phone to Courfeyrac this morning,” Grantaire says finally. “I’m sure he’s constantly reminding you of his disappointment that you’re not banging your way around Europe.”

Enjolras wonders if it would wipe the smile off Grantaire’s face if he knew that Courfeyrac’s disappointment was primarily directed towards _him,_ and that Courfeyrac imagines they have _sexual tension,_ and even thinks that Enjolras might be feeling things he ought not to feel in Grantaire’s general direction. He wonders if Grantaire would be discomfited to know that the possibility even exists.

“I met Bahorel through Feuilly,” Enjolras says because he’s not sure he wants to find out. “They worked together a lot.”

“You two apprenticed together?” Grantaire asks. He always looks so eager when they get to talking about Enjolras’s life. Maybe that should be flattering, but unfortunately there are a lot of things in Enjolras’s life that he prefers not to dwell on, and this happens to be one of them.

“No, Bahorel got into hunting a long time before me,” he says. He remembers the first time Feuilly brought him over to Bahorel in the Musain, to introduce them. He remembers trying to stand tall and look like someone who’d survived more than just one hunt. Bahorel had been slouched against the bar but had still easily towered over him, and he’d looked him over with a critical eye and a wry, crooked smile and said _‘kind of skinny for this job, aren’t you, kid?’_

“So where is he now?” Grantaire is asking. “Does he come to the Musain?”

Enjolras swallows hard.

“I don’t know where he is,” he says.

Grantaire cocks his head questioningly. Enjolras sighs.

“When Feuilly died, Bahorel was...there,” he starts falteringly. “I mean, he saw. They were working the case together.” _And I wasn’t with them. I was so stupid and determined to prove I could handle a hunt of my own, and I wasn’t there with them, and Feuilly died._ “I haven’t seen him since the...well, I don’t know if you’d call it a funeral. Combeferre told me that he just didn’t want to hunt anymore, after that. Said he’d had enough.”

And he heard it from Combeferre because Bahorel wouldn’t talk to him; didn’t want to see him. Bahorel hadn’t even wanted him to be at the funeral – they had actually come to blows over it. Enjolras remembers staring up at him through a sheet of blood running into his eye from a cut on his eyebrow while Bahorel – himself bleeding from a split cheekbone and with furious tears coursing down his face – screamed himself hoarse at him. _‘He taught you everything, he took fucking pity on you and kept your sorry ass alive, and you couldn’t even come when he called for backup! Where were you? We needed help and you’re a shitty excuse for a hunter but you were closest and you_ didn’t come! _Now he’s dead! He’s dead. It should have been you.’_

Combeferre had arrived later and taken control of the situation, which was probably the only reason that Enjolras had been able to attend the funeral, in the end. He almost wishes he hadn’t gone, though - it had been a dismal affair. There had been no heartfelt tributes or words of comfort or even the freedom to grieve. There had been no _closure._ It had just been him, Bahorel and Combeferre gathered stony-faced around a makeshift pyre in a deserted strip of wilderness. The body had been wrapped in a bed-sheet liberated from the hotel they had been staying at. Enjolras remembers thinking the body looked too small to be Feuilly. None of them spoke as they lit the fire, and when it had burned to ashes they worked for hours to remove all traces of it. There was no grave or tombstone. There was nothing. It was as if Feuilly had never existed.

Bahorel had been gone by the next morning.

“I think Combeferre still checks up on him from time to time,” Enjolras says. “But I haven’t seen him.”

He wonders if that’s for the best. He feels like Bahorel might have murdered him by now, if he’d been forced to continue seeing him on any sort of regular basis. Still, sometimes he can’t help but miss him and the way things used to be, when Feuilly was alive and they would meet Bahorel at the Musain and he would shatter its gloomy silence with his booming laugh.

“Are you angry that he quit?” Grantaire asks him.

“Not really,” Enjolras says, perplexed. He’d known Grantaire would keep asking questions, but he thinks that’s rather an odd one. “I’d rather he stayed, of course, but it’s his choice, in the end.”

“So all that stuff about having a moral responsibility, all those rules only apply to you? What makes you so special?”

Oh. That old dispute.

“I...” Enjolras automatically goes to make his case for the thousandth time, but he quite abruptly realises that he just doesn’t have it in him today. He doesn’t want to fight right now, especially not with Grantaire. “I don’t want to argue about this today.”

“That’s not like you,” Grantaire says with raised eyebrows.

“Talk about something else or stop talking,” Enjolras says. He picks up his book again to make it clear that he’ll just go back to reading if his terms are not met, but Grantaire reaches over and pushes it down.

“What do you want to talk about?” he says. “Our sight-seeing itinerary for Amsterdam?”

“We won’t be doing any sight-seeing,” Enjolras snaps, and he doesn’t mean to, he doesn’t _want to fight,_ but Grantaire made him talk about Bahorel and Feuilly and that has done nothing but remind him that people can die if you take your foot off the gas for even a moment. “How many times do we need to go over this?”

“But it’s Amsterdam! You can’t be in Amsterdam and not _see_ Amsterdam.” Grantaire whines.

“You say that about _every place we go to._ ”

“Not true. There was nothing I wanted to see in Lyon. That was on you.”

“We’re going to Amsterdam to work this case and then we’re leaving,” Enjolras says sternly, pointedly ignoring the mention of Lyon, which had admittedly been a bit of a disaster on his part. Still, he can’t quite find it in him to regret it. “We’re not going to lose time because you want to drink yourself stupid, smoke yourself into a stupor and visit the red-light district.”

Grantaire blinks and then gives a dry smile.

“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the, uh, Rijksmuseum,” he says. “And, y’know, the various other places of cultural interest.”

“...Oh.” Enjolras’s irritation goes up in smoke as he realises that, whoops, he went and fucked up again. He’s been thinking recently that he wants to find out more about Grantaire’s interests, more about _Grantaire,_ not shove him further away by acting like an asshole.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s a city of culture,” Grantaire is saying.

“I-” Enjolras flounders, and he feels horribly ashamed – didn’t he punch a man just yesterday for calling Grantaire a drunk? “Sorry.”

“No you’re not, you’re just stunned that I want to waste time on something intellectual like art instead of plain old debauchery,” Grantaire says. He’s smiling but Enjolras can’t tell if it’s a real smile.

“When we were in Bavaria, all you would talk about was Oktoberfest,” he mumbles.

“And in Cologne it was the cathedral I wouldn’t shut up about. Give me some credit, Enjolras, I’m a man of eclectic tastes.”

“I know,” Enjolras says hastily, and he so desperately wants to make it clear that he _does_ know but he doesn’t know how. “I know, I didn’t mean to...”

“To imply that I’m a reprobate and a drunk?” Grantaire says. “Don’t worry, you’re not wrong about that.”

Enjolras sort of feels like he just wants to curl up in a ball and die. He is quite possibly the worst person ever.

“You’re not, though,” he says. His face feels hot and he’s sure he must be bright red. He is not good at this sort of conversation, but he’s dug a hole for himself and now he needs to do his best to get back out. “I mean, you certainly go out of your way to come across like that, but. You’re not. And I didn’t mean to sound like I think you are.”

Grantaire just stares at him like he’s grown an extra head. The silence is agony.

“And I know you like art,” Enjolras adds finally.

“Are you feeling okay?” Grantaire asks him, and Enjolras knows that getting annoyed will only make things worse but he gets annoyed anyway because it seems like Grantaire always thinks that something must be wrong with him whenever he tries to be civil.

“I’m fine,” he says with a warning scowl that Grantaire seems to completely miss.

“You don’t sound like yourself today,” Grantaire insists. “Are you still stressing about those guys at the Musain yesterday?”

“No! I-” Enjolras makes a frustrated noise and gets to his feet. He feels like this is probably his own fault, somehow, but he’s trying to _fix it_ and Grantaire _won’t let him._ “God. Why do you have to make it so _difficult?_ ”

“...Make what so difficult?” Grantaire asks, looking completely lost.

“Being nice!” Enjolras snaps. And then he storms out the door. He feels like a child throwing a tantrum even as he does it, but he needs out. Everything he says is just making things worse.

He doesn’t want to go back to the Musain, so he just wanders. He seriously considers calling Courfeyrac back and informing him that _you were wrong, you were so, so wrong, I don’t understand him and he doesn’t like me and that’s all there is to it, please stop complicating matters._

He sighs heavily at the sky and hopes that Jehan will get here soon. When he’s hunting, he can at least worry about monsters instead of human problems.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Any particular reason you tried to take my head off with Nineteen Eighty-Four?” Grantaire asks, glancing at the book lying at his feet.
> 
> “Sorry. I was...” Enjolras trails off and shakes his head with a weak laugh. “God, I'm so glad to see you.”
> 
> “Right...?” Grantaire is smiling but he looks uncertain. “What, were you expecting someone else?”
> 
> \--
> 
> (Enjolras's version of events of chapter 12 of the main story - or part of it, anyway.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter takes place during chapter 12 of Under My Wings - I recommend reading that chapter first, and this one after!

 

~

Enjolras wakes slowly in a soft bed in a patch of sunshine. He screws up his eyes against the light but revels in the warmth for a few moments, stretching out on his side like a cat. He doesn't want to move, and he really doesn't remember this hotel bed being so comfortable when he lay down in it last night, but then, it's often the case that a bed doesn't feel comfortable until you have to get out of it. And he really does need to get up – just because the nature of this case necessitates doing a lot of the work at night doesn't mean that he should waste the day-

He opens his eyes. And he freezes.

The sunlight isn't coming through a window, but rather through a set of glass doors, which lead out onto a small balcony. The room is large and airy, with a high ceiling and pale blue walls. More importantly, it is definitely not his hotel room; it's definitely not a hotel room _at all._ Next to the bed, there is a chest of drawers, on top of which there is a reading lamp, a small pile of books, a cell phone plugged in to charge, a bulging ring-binder and a framed photograph. There is a laundry basket in a nearby corner, built-in wardrobes made of white-painted wood on the opposite wall. This is _someone's_ bedroom, and he can't even hazard a guess as to whose.

Enjolras sits up and tells himself very sternly to _stay calm._ He casts his mind back desperately, trying to find some explanation as to how he got here, and where here could possibly be. He remembers being on a plane, arriving in Palma, getting to the hotel (with its room that looked nothing like this one). He remembers night falling, and him and Grantaire heading out to investigate the case...

He does not remember going back to the hotel. He doesn't remember finding Grantaire again after they parted ways to cover more ground.

He looks around him, but he already knows that Grantaire is not here. He's alone.

But, oh, he might not be _completely_ alone. Enjolras blinks, perturbed when he notices that the bed he's in is a double bed. He was sleeping on the right side, closest to the window. The left side looks suspiciously rumpled, as if someone else had been sleeping there very recently. Certainly, the duvet on that side is thrown back, and Enjolras could almost swear he can see a slight indent in the mattress where another body had been lying. He reaches out tentatively and lays a hand on the mattress, to check if it's warm. It isn't. But that doesn't prove anything.

He gets hurriedly out of the bed, which had felt so wonderful just a few moments ago, but now makes his skin itch just by its proximity. He realises he is wearing only his underwear, and God, that is a _terrible_ state to be in. Alone, utterly lost in a strange place, unarmed, and not even dressed. He looks around wildly for his clothes but can't see them anywhere. In desperation, he hauls open the nearby drawers and takes some of the clothes he finds neatly folded inside. He pays no attention to what he grabs, but they turn out to be a pair of red skinny jeans and a grey t-shirt. By a stroke of luck, they fit just like they were his own.

It's around then that he properly notices that there is a second, matching chest of drawers on the other side of the bed. This one also has a lamp on top, and some books, and a fat notebook with a few pencils scattered around it.

Enjolras feels his stomach start to twist itself into knots. This isn't just a room belonging to a stranger, it's a room belonging to two strangers, and that makes even less sense. _Why am I here?_

He thinks back again, fighting to keep his mind free of panic. He remembers being at the club, and it was chaotic in there but his head was clear. He'd only been ordering soft drinks, because he knew he'd stick out like a sore thumb if he didn't have a glass in his hand, but he'd been _working,_ so alcohol had been out of the question. Could someone have drugged his drink? He wants to reject that idea, because he was _careful,_ he was _vigilant,_ but it would certainly explain why he can't remember anything further. It might also go a long way towards explaining what he's doing in some stranger's apartment.

He swallows hard, feeling a little sick. Drugged or not, he's sure he'd never initiate or consent to some anonymous one-night stand, because he's not _interested_ in sex for the sheer sake of it, that's not how he _works._

He pushes open the glass doors and steps out onto the balcony, both to gauge his wider surroundings and also just because he needs some air. There are planters full of flowers hooked over the edge of the balcony's metal railing. The sun is warm but not scorching and there is a pleasantly cool breeze blowing, and even before Enjolras looks up, he just _knows,_ he just has a feeling – it's impossible, he tells himself, but he just knows he's not in Majorca anymore. Then he does look up, and he sees buildings that look oddly familiar, and he looks down over the edge of the balcony and sees that he is three floors up above a street that also looks familiar, and there are cars and people milling along, and he can hear the people talking and they're all speaking French-

He reels back from the railing, and he can hear his heart pounding. From here, he can't see the Eiffel Tower, or Notre Dame, or any other landmarks, but he's in Paris, he knows it in his _bones,_ but how, how, _how-?_

He shakes his head sharply. _Don't panic._

He goes back into the bedroom, and he looks around for anything that he could use as a weapon. His own knives and gun have vanished along with his clothes, and that's deeply problematic, but he'll worry about that later. Right now he just wants something sharp, or something heavy; anything he can use to defend himself.

Whoever's bedroom this is, though, they are most definitely a civilian. Not a hunter and, if he's lucky, not some crazed murderer. There's nothing at all that could be useful in a fight. He's just contemplating the books on the chest of drawers, wondering whether any of them would be heavy enough to deal a solid blow, when he realises with a jolt that the phone charging next to them is his own. He snatches it up – ignoring for the moment how utterly bizarre it is that it was _plugged in and charging –_ and scrolls through his contacts. He goes to call Combeferre purely because he's first alphabetically, but then he hears _footsteps._ Very nearby. And getting closer.

The door to the bedroom creaks open. Not knowing what else to do, Enjolras picks up the nearest book and hurls it at where he imagines the intruder's head will be. Unfortunately, he's a little quick off the mark – the book smacks the edge of the door as it's still swinging open, and someone swears loudly in surprise. Enjolras, preparing to grab the next book, pauses because he knows that voice.

A head pokes cautiously into the room.

“Enjolras?” Grantaire says, his expression caught somewhere between frowning and laughing. “What are you doing?”

“Grantaire.” Enjolras almost sags to the floor in relief. Grantaire is here, and _safe,_ and so he must be safe too. It takes all of Enjolras's willpower to cross the room in a sedate fashion instead of running straight to him and wailing _where were you I was so scared what's going **on?**_

“Any particular reason you tried to take my head off with _Nineteen Eighty-Four_?” Grantaire asks, glancing at the book lying at his feet.

“Sorry. I was...” Enjolras trails off and shakes his head with a weak laugh. “God, I'm so glad to see you.”

“Right...?” Grantaire is smiling but he looks uncertain. “What, were you expecting someone else?”

“I didn't know what to expect!” Enjolras gestures helplessly to the bedroom that most definitely belongs to neither of them. “Where are we?”

Grantaire's smile fades. He blinks, looking puzzled.

“What?” he says finally.

“Where are we?” Enjolras repeats. “What is this place? How did I get here?”

“...You know where you are.” Grantaire frowns at him. “Come on, don't fuck around. That's not funny.”

“I'm not...what?” Enjolras suddenly feels cold all over. “No, stop it. I don't know this place. If you know, then tell me.”

Grantaire stares at him for what feels like a very long time. Then, to Enjolras's total surprise, Grantaire steps right into his space, catching his face gently in both hands.

“You're serious?” he says, tilting Enjolras's head up and looking into his eyes with concern. “You don't know where you are?”

“ _No!_ ” Enjolras says far too loudly, far too shrilly. He makes himself calm down, makes himself take a deep breath and say it again, quietly. “No.”

“Shit,” Grantaire breathes. He lays a hand on Enjolras's forehead. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I'm feeling _confused_ ,” Enjolras snaps. He smacks the hand away and tries to ignore how very hurt Grantaire looks by that. “Just tell me where I am.”

“You should sit down,” Grantaire murmurs, guiding him back towards the unfamiliar bed.

“ _Tell me,”_ Enjolras demands, trying to twist out of his grip because this is _wrong,_ this isn't fair, Grantaire was supposed to make this better, not worse-

“Enjolras.” Grantaire practically drags him down onto the edge of the bed, and he has an arm around his shoulders and a hand at his waist and since when does he do that? He's not been keeping his distance so much lately but since when does Grantaire touch him like this-?

“Tell me,” Enjolras says again. He hears his voice shake and he hates it. And he hates that Grantaire looks so _sad,_ hates the way that Grantaire is looking at him like he's breaking his heart.

“You're home,” Grantaire says softly, and the hand at Enjolras's waist comes up to cup his face instead, and Grantaire's hands are warm and strong and gentle and everything about this is so wrong but those hands are the only things keeping Enjolras anywhere near grounded right now. “Enjolras, you're home, you live here. You know that, right?”

It's Enjolras's turn to stare – he stares at Grantaire, at his sombre expression, and he waits for him to stop this, to crack up laughing and reveal the big joke, but he doesn't. He doesn't.

“No,” Enjolras blurts out, shaking his head. “No, you know that's not true, I've never been here before and I don't live anywhere and neither do you.”

“We both live right here,” Grantaire insists, his thumb sweeping soothingly over Enjolras's cheekbone. “I promise you, you're at home and you're safe.”

“We...?” Enjolras repeats dazedly, turning his head to look at the bed, made for two, in this room which is undeniably made for two. “No...”

“Something's not right, I should call an ambulance,” Grantaire says.

“There's nothing wrong with _me_ ,” Enjolras says fiercely. He wrenches himself out of Grantaire's hold, gets to his feet and backs away.

“What, so it's just that the rest of the world is wrong?” Grantaire stands up too but keeps his distance. “Do you think I'm lying to you?”

Enjolras falters, because no, he doesn't think Grantaire would lie to him – but, he realises, this might not _be_ Grantaire. His hand automatically goes for his flask of holy water but of course, it's not there, he's unarmed and helpless.

“Christo,” he says, as a last resort, because Combeferre once told him that demons flinch from that word, but he's never tested the theory before.

“What?” Grantaire says. He doesn't flinch.

“Nothing,” Enjolras says. He's thinking about shape-shifters. He's thinking that he needs a silver knife, a silver _anything-_

“Okay, what if I just called Combeferre?” Grantaire says carefully. “He's not a doctor yet but I expect he's the next best thing. I'm sure he wouldn't mind coming over.”

“Combeferre,” Enjolras repeats. “He...so we are in Paris.”

“Yes.” Grantaire smiles uncertainly, tentative relief in his eyes. “You remember that?”

“No, last night we were...” _In another country. In a tourist trap on an island far away from here. This isn't possible._

“You remember where we were last night?” Grantaire asks. He approaches him again, puts his hands on his shoulders, and everything is still so wrong but Enjolras is so scared and Grantaire makes him feel safer even if something's wrong with Grantaire too so he doesn't push him away.

“We were...at a club,” Enjolras says falteringly. Grantaire's smile widens.

“That's right,” he says encouragingly.

“We were looking for...” What were they hunting again? The memories seem hazy, or maybe he's just too panicked to think straight. “Something.”

“We weren't looking for anything,” Grantaire tells him, eyebrows pinching into a frown again. “We were just out. With the others.”

“The others?”

Grantaire steers him by the shoulders back around to the side of the bed he'd been sleeping on, to the drawers with the books and the folder and the photo in its frame, and he points wordlessly at the photo. Enjolras feels his mouth go dry.

“You know who they are, right?” Grantaire says in his ear. “Please tell me you know who they are.”

“I know,” Enjolras whispers, and he wants to scream. The photograph is undeniable, it's right in front of his eyes, but it's _wrong._ He can see himself in the middle, but he has no memory of this picture being taken – he knows for a _fact_ that this picture has never been taken. He's in the middle, and Grantaire is on his right and Courfeyrac is on his left and Courfeyrac has one arm slung around Jehan's shoulders- but _Courfeyrac and Jehan have never met,_ he knows that, he _knows._ And there's Joly and Bossuet laughing with Combeferre, and there's Marius and Cosette and Bahorel, and in the corner there's Feuilly and _no no no Feuilly's **dead** -_

Enjolras has never fainted in his life, but he suddenly knows, with icy certainty, that he is about to do just that. He feels like he's falling. Maybe he is.

“Enjolras? Enjolras. You're alright, just lie down, come on, lie down,” he hears Grantaire saying, but his voice is distant and indistinct and soon it fades completely, and everything goes black.

~

When he next wakes, he keeps his eyes shut for as long as he can. He prays it was a dream. He prays that he'll open his eyes and see their hotel room, and Grantaire will either be in the bed next to his or waiting at the table with coffee-

He opens his eyes. He sees blue walls and glass doors and the chest of drawers upon which he knows there is a photograph that can't exist. He tries not to moan.

“There you are.” Combeferre appears, smiling, at the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Combeferre,” Enjolras gasps, sitting bolt-upright. “Oh, God. Please tell me you know what's going on.”

“Well, I think I do,” Combeferre says with a chuckle. “Right now my best guess is that, when you took your little tumble last night, you concussed yourself to hell and back.”

Enjolras looks at him blankly.

“What?” he says finally.

“I'm not surprised you don't remember,” Combeferre says. “You had a little too much to drink last night. You had a fall – hit your head on a table. You went down so fast, not even Grantaire had time to catch you.”

“...My head doesn't hurt,” Enjolras says because he doesn't even know where to begin arguing with this theory.

“Lucky you,” Combeferre says, extracting what looks like a tiny torch from his pocket. “Let me look at your eyes.”

Enjolras is silent while Combeferre shines the light in his eyes, because whatever is wrong here has clearly infected Combeferre too, and that's nothing short of terrifying. He's completely alone in this; has to solve this and fix this on his own.

He wonders if this is all something to do with what they were hunting, but in order to ponder that theory any further, he'd really have to remember what it _was_ they were hunting. And he knows this, he _knows,_ it's there at the edge of his mind...

“A djinn,” he says out loud when it comes to him.

“Hm?” Combeferre says, putting his torch away. “What's that?”

“You don't know?” Enjolras asks him. _How can you not know, you **sent me after it-**_

“...I thought a djinn was something like a genie,” Combeferre says with a shrug. “Like in the _Thousand and One Nights_ stories. What made you think of that?”

“Doesn't matter,” Enjolras mutters. Combeferre pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.

“Don't worry,” he tells him. “I'm sure you just rattled your brain a little. If you calm down and get some rest, you'll realise that this all makes sense. You live here, and you're happy here, and everything is fine. You'll see that.”

Enjolras is silent. Combeferre smiles at him again and picks up a bag that Enjolras hadn't noticed before.

“Grantaire's in the kitchen. Call me if you need to,” he says as he heads for the door. “I have to head to the hospital just now.”

“...Why?” Enjolras asks.

“Because I'm a medical student,” Combeferre says patiently. “You know that, too.”

And then he's gone.

Enjolras sits alone in the bedroom that is supposedly his for a long time. He tries to _think._ And his thoughts keep leading him back to Combeferre's offhand comment: _I thought a djinn was something like a genie. Like in the_ Thousand and One Nights _stories._

Enjolras remembers those stories. He remembers genies _._ Creatures, or maybe spirits, that lived in lamps and granted wishes-

He looks around him uneasily.

_If I could wish for anything,_ he thinks to himself, _what would it be?_

He likes to think he'd wish for a world with no monsters – for the kind of world he fights for every day. He likes to think that if he was offered one wish, he'd use it to make the world a better place.

_But maybe djinn don't offer you a wish. Maybe they just look inside you and see what it is you_ really _want, the selfish stuff, and that's what they give you..._

He certainly doesn't remember making any wishes, but here he is, in a world where his friends appear to all be alive and happy and together and leading normal lives. And he seems to live in this apartment in Paris, with this big bedroom and a balcony. And Grantaire.

Enjolras feels his cheeks heat up slightly.

He looks over at the empty left side of the bed. _Grantaire's_ side of the bed. He chews absently on his lower lip.

_You live here, and you're happy here, and everything is fine._

He gets to his feet and pads over to the door. He opens it and looks out onto a hallway with many doors. He has no idea where the kitchen is.

He finds it eventually. It turns out the be the door furthest from the bedroom, which is sort of convenient, because it means he learned where everything else is on his way here. Grantaire has his back to him; he's standing at the sink with a mug in one hand, gazing out the window. He turns around when he hears Enjolras's footsteps behind him.

“...Sorry I worried you,” Enjolras says with a wobbly attempt at a smile. He feels suddenly oddly shy for some reason.

Grantaire sets his mug down on the counter. Enjolras notices, belatedly, a second mug on the nearby table, along with two plates of food. _He got breakfast,_ he realises. It'll definitely be cold by now.

“You're feeling better?” Grantaire asks, closing the space between them. “I mean, everything's back to normal?”

“Yeah,” Enjolras tells him. “Everything's fine now.”

Grantaire smiles widely, so _glad,_ so relieved. Without a moment's hesitation or uncertainty, he wraps Enjolras up in his arms and presses a kiss to his forehead. Like it's the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is, in this world, whatever this world is. Enjolras doesn't know. All he knows is that he's blushing like an idiot, and he knows he should do _something_ but he doesn't have a clue what, and in the end he just stands there and lets himself be held. Grantaire doesn't seem to mind.

“I think you're going to need a fresh cup of coffee, though,” he says at length.

Enjolras doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

“Yeah,” he says. “That'd be nice.”

~

Enjolras spends the rest of the day surreptitiously searching the entire apartment for further clues as to what the life he allegedly lives here is like. It's difficult, because Grantaire doesn't seem to want to let him out of his sight too long after his bout of supposed amnesia, but he manages. From the calendar in the kitchen (each page features a print of a different Van Gogh painting) he learns that it is June, and today is a Saturday. There are only a few things marked on the June page, and the thing that catches his eye is a date near the end of the month upon which someone (presumably Grantaire or possibly himself, Enjolras supposes) has written _'Grantaire – Exhibition!!'_ He desperately wants to ask if that means what he thinks it means, but he feels like he can't, because he is most definitely supposed to already know.

He finds no trace of hunting paraphernalia of any sort anywhere. No hex bags, no devil's traps under the welcome mat, no weapons. When he notices that his anti-possession tattoo is gone, he feels the surprise only distantly. The impossibilities are mounting up to such an extent that he is finding himself quickly losing his capacity to be truly astonished.

It would seem the two of them are civilians, then. And he discovers that he is not only a civilian but also a student when Grantaire laughingly makes a remark about how he hopes Enjolras's memory loss won't render all the studying he's been doing for that big test completely useless. Enjolras has precisely no idea what test he's talking about, but he just nods and agrees that that would be most unfortunate.

They don’t go out anywhere. Grantaire seems intent on fussing over him after the events of the morning, and Enjolras supposes he can’t really blame him. He knows he’d be the same, if not ten times worse, if the situation were reversed and Grantaire woke up one day and said he didn’t know where he was.

They stay inside, in this apartment that Enjolras is supposed to call home, and he tries to get used to the calm, the quiet. Grantaire sits on the couch – they have a _couch_ – and sketches, with much nicer pencils in a much nicer sketchbook than he uses in their hunting life. Enjolras pretends to read, all the while thinking, analysing, trying to understand what this all means. After some time, a thought strikes him. He gets to his feet.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says in response to Grantaire’s quizzical look. He goes to the bedroom and picks up his phone. Feeling his heartbeat pounding in his chest, ears, temples, he scrolls through his contacts until he finds Feuilly’s name. He hits call, and his hand shakes as he brings the phone to his ear.

It rings – once, twice, three times. Someone picks up.

“Hi, Enjolras.”

He can’t even reply – not coherently, anyway. A small sound escapes him, a sort of happy, gasping sob.

“Enjolras?” There’s concern in Feuilly’s voice now, and that just makes it all _worse._ “You alright?”

“I- yes.” He tries to get a hold of himself – or of his voice, at least. He’s suddenly aware that tears are flooding freely down his face. “Hi, yes, I’m fine.”

“So what can I do for you?”

“Nothing, just- I just felt like calling you. To say hello?” Enjolras supposes he must sound like an idiot. He doesn’t care. The tears are still flowing and he’s smiling wide enough to hurt his face.

Feuilly laughs. He thinks it might be the best sound he’s ever heard.

“Is this because I didn’t manage to come out with you guys last night?” he says. “You miss me that much?”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says. “Yeah, I missed you.”

“You’re a weird kid,” Feuilly says, but with the same amused affection that he always used to say such things. “I’d like to chat, but my break is just finishing up so I need to get back to work. But I’ll see you soon, alright?”

“Yeah, great. Good. I’ll see you.”

“Bye, Enjolras.”

He hangs up the phone, dries his eyes thoroughly, and heads back to Grantaire.

They order take-out for dinner later, and eat it while watching a movie that Enjolras vaguely remembers seeing with Courfeyrac in high school. It’s all so normal that it feels unreal.

When it’s time to go to bed, Enjolras finds himself hesitating, unsure of what to do. In the end, he shucks out of his jeans but keeps his t-shirt on. If Grantaire finds this strange, he doesn’t comment – just hops into bed. At length, Enjolras follows suit, cautiously. He positions himself as close to the edge of the mattress as he can get without falling off. Maybe in this version of reality, Grantaire is used to them sleeping close together, comfortable and accustomed to each other’s presence, but Enjolras is not. Not yet.

He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep after the day he’s had, but something about Grantaire’s soft breathing, and their shared warmth that Enjolras can feel despite the distance between them, is just so calming, and he soon drifts off.

~

The next morning, Enjolras wakes again in a puddle of warm sunshine. There is a different sort of warmth radiating from behind him, too; he twists around and sees Grantaire still sleeping next to him. His heart only skips a beat or two before he remembers y _ou live here, and you're happy here, and everything is fine._

He lies very still, watching Grantaire's sleeping face. He's well used to seeing Grantaire sleep, of course – they've been sharing rooms for around a year now – but this feels very different. Enjolras thinks he looks more peaceful here – and why not? Civilian life is much more peaceful than hunting in just about every way. And he still can't come to terms with the strangeness that is the two of them sharing a bed – _their own bed_ – instead of sleeping on opposite sides of a hotel room. It's a kind of intimacy that he's never experienced before, and doesn't know exactly what to do with. Grantaire is so close that Enjolras could reach out and touch him, could curl close to him and find out what it feels like to fall asleep like that. He doesn't, though. He slips quietly out of the bed and pads to the bathroom.

When he was younger, he and Courfeyrac would frequently sleep over at each other's houses, and he remembers the comforting warmth of another body next to his, and playful kicks under the sheets, and tight hugs when one or the other of them was upset. But that was different too, wasn't it? They had just been two friends; Enjolras strongly gets the impression that that is not the case between him and Grantaire, in this world that he may or may not have wished into existence. And that's- that's not _bad._ He's- well. He's done a good job of being oblivious to it, and then ignoring it, and then denying it, but apparently things like bullshitting yourself and denial don't work on djinn.

Grantaire rudely invaded his life little over a year ago; of late he's also started invading his dreams, daydreams and thoughts with slightly embarrassing frequency. Enjolras knows that, if things were different, if he didn't have a cause to fight for every minute of every day, and if Grantaire wanted it too, he would want the two of them to be together. He wants that and everything that comes with it.

And now things are different, aren't they? Here, whatever 'here' is, he could have all that.

But not all at once. That's too much. He can't just, overnight, make the jump from cordiality to full-blown, easy and familiar romantic affection. Maybe in this world, he and Grantaire have already traversed the awkwardness and pitfalls of beginning a relationship, but he has no memory of it. As odd as it may appear to Grantaire, and everyone else around them, for that matter, he's going to have to take things slowly while he gets used to the idea.

He blinks sleepily at his reflection in the mirror above the bathroom sink. There's a shelf on the wall next to it, upon which there are two of everything; two razors, two cans of deodorant, two bottles of shampoo...It still feels strange, but it makes him smile a little. One of the razors is the exact same as the one he always uses, so he assumes that one is his. He picks it up and starts running the hot tap and waits for the water to warm up.

When he looks up at the mirror again, his reflection is glaring at him.

“ _Wake up,”_ it snarls in his voice.

He drops the razor. It hits the tile floor with a sharp clatter, and the blade comes off the handle and spins away. He doesn't notice. His reflection curls its lip in disgust.

“ _Wake UP_!” it repeats angrily. Enjolras takes a step backwards, staring at it in mute terror. He's a seasoned hunter who woke up yesterday in a world very unlike his own and he thought nothing could surprise him anymore, but now the mirror is shouting at him, and he is not ashamed to admit that he doesn't know what to do about that.

His reflection gives a low growl of frustration and thumps the glass of the mirror with its fist. The sound of the impact is booming and seems to reverberate through the whole room. Enjolras squeezes his eyes tightly shut and shakes his head because no, this is one impossibility too many, this _can't be happening._ As if disagreeing with him, that booming sound comes again and again, and oh _God,_ what now? His reflection is going to crash through the mirror and scream at him some more, or engage him in some doppelgänger fight to the death-?

_No,_ he thinks. _No no no no **no** -!_

He jolts awake in a puddle of warm sunshine. He sits bolt-upright, breathing hard like he just ran a mile.

“Mmm?” Grantaire, wakened by his sudden violent movement, blinks blearily up at him. “You alright?”

“...Yeah.” Enjolras nods, trying to slow his breathing, trying to calm down. “I just. Had a really weird dream.”

He shakes his head and goes to climb out of the bed, but Grantaire catches him by the wrist.

“It's Saturday,” he murmurs. “Be lazy with me.”

And Enjolras lets him pull him back down, lets Grantaire wrap himself around him from behind despite his earlier misgivings, because the dream has left him shaken and Grantaire is warmth and safety and sanity. Still, he can't help but tense when Grantaire slides a hand under his t-shirt and across his chest, but all he does is press his palm flat against his breastbone.

“Must have been some dream,” he says. “Your heart is going like crazy.”


End file.
